Math Club’s 75th presentation: “Soccer Balls, Pentagons and Euler”
September 8, 2008 | EditorLet’s celebrate Math Club’s 75th presentation!
Wednesday, September 17, at 3:30 p.m. in room 209
Come one, come all. Gift Certificates and books as door prizes, refreshments soon after the presentation:
“Soccer Balls, Pentagons and Euler” by Professor Marty Isaacs, UW–Madison
A soccer ball is essentially a sphere covered with pentagons and hexagons, arranged in such a way that three of these polygons meet at each corner. We will see in this talk that whenever a sphere is covered by pentagons and hexagons in that way, there must be exacty 12 pentagons. This depends on a beautiful formula of Euler.
Professor Isaacs received his Ph.D from Harvard University and has held visiting positions at UC Berkeley, Oxford, Australian National University, University of Essen (Germany), University of Valencia (Spain). He is the author of three books and over 125 research papers. He has been a recipient of a Sloan Research Fellowship, the UW Teaching Award, the Mathematical Association of America (WI) Teaching Award, and the UW School of Engineering Teaching Award.
For more details on all other activities for Fall 2008, please visit the Math Club website.
