Annual Charlotte Scott Lecture in Mathematics

Indra’s Pearls: A mathematical adventure

a public lecture by

Professor Caroline Series FRS

University of Warwick; President of the London Mathematical Society

Wednesday, 7th of February 2018,

6:00–7:20 pm

Newton Lecture Theatre  INB0114 in the Isaac Newton building, University of Lincoln

Image courtesy Jos Leys

This talk is based on the book of the same title by David Mumford, Caroline Series and David Wright. It tells the story of the authors’ computer explorations of some simple but repeated operations on complex numbers, whose interactions produce delicate and beautiful fractals. Illustrating with many pictures, we will explain the geometry and algorithms which generate the images, behind which lie a wealth of mathematical meaning and questions for further research. More of these `Kleinian fractals’ and software for generating your own designs can be found on the web.

This public lecture is a part of celebrations of the 160th anniversary of Charlotte Scott, the famous mathematician born in Lincoln, who was also influential in developing  mathematical education of women and their participation in mathematical research. 

Professor Caroline Series FRS is a pure mathematician known for her work on symbolic coding of geodesics on hyperbolic surfaces and for novel contributions to the study of three-dimensional hyperbolic manifolds via their fractal limit sets. Her beautiful book Indra’s Pearls, coauthored by D. Mumford and D. Wright, gives some background flavour. In 1986 Prof Series was a founder member of European Women in Mathematics, and in 2015 she became the first vice-chair of the International Mathematical Union’s Committee for Women in Mathematics.  Prof Series is currently President of the London Mathematical Society.