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HLF Blogs – A Mathematical Easter Egg

By Katie Steckles. Posted September 28, 2017

This week, Katie and Paul are blogging from the Heidelberg Laureate Forum – a week-long maths conference where current young researchers in maths and computer science can meet and hear talks by top-level prize-winning researchers. For more information about the HLF, visit the Heidelberg Laureate Forum website.

To make all the HLF attendees’ lives easier this week, the organisers have put together a marvelous app which includes the programme for the event, information about the conference, a full delegate list with a built-in messaging system, and a few other bells and whistles. There’s also an intriguing mystery, which has been eating away at me since I installed the app at the start of the conference.

HLF Blogs – Math ⇔ Art: the Gosper curve

By Paul Taylor. Posted September 28, 2017

Running alongside the 5th HLF is an exhibition of mathematical art by the astrophysicist Aldo Spizzichino. He’s taken ideas from mathematics, and used his own set of programs (in Fortran, no less) to produce his images, a couple of dozen of which are on display in the Old University building a few steps from the forum. Although all the pieces were generating discussion as I looked round the exhibition on Sunday morning, I’ve picked two to talk a bit about, both based on the same piece of maths.

HLF Blogs – Approximate Gaussian Elimination

By Katie Steckles. Posted September 27, 2017

One of the more technical lectures at the HLF so far was given by Daniel Spielman, on the Approximate Gaussian Elimination algorithm his research group has produced, and how it differs from traditional Gaussian Elimination. So what is Gaussian Elimination?

HLF Blogs – Vint Cerf’s press conference: in quotes

By Paul Taylor. Posted September 27, 2017

Vint Cerf, who along with Robert E Kahn won the ACM Turing Award in 2004 for his work on the TCP/IP protocols underpinning the Internet, is one of the Laureates at this year’s HLF. On Friday he’ll be giving a lecture on an ‘Interplanetary Internet’, the protocols needed to deal with the unique challenges posed by telecommunications in space. But on Monday afternoon he chatted to a small group of journalists and bloggers on a wide variety of topics. With apologies for anything I’ve mangled, here’s a short selection of quotes from the man himself.

HLF Blogs – Math ⇔ Art: what is a rotogon?

By Katie Steckles. Posted September 27, 2017

Alongside this week’s Laureate Forum, there’s an art exhibition on display in the nearby Old University building. Math ⇔ Art (Math is Art, Art is Math) is a collection of computer-generated artworks by Italian astrophysicist Aldo Spizzichino. In addition to a long career in research and many publications, Spizzichino has also produced an impressive quantity of mathematical art.

Using Fortran to generate computer graphics, Spizzichino has explored many mathematical shapes, structures and ideas through visual representation. The exhibit invites visitors to enjoy the mathematical forms for their own intrinsic beauty and, in Spizzichino’s words, ‘to complete the work with their own interpretation’.

Heidelberg Laureate Forum 2017

By Katie Steckles. Posted September 23, 2017

This week our roving reporters Katie and Paul have gone on a trip to Heidelberg in Germany, where the world’s foremost undergraduate, masters, PhD and postdoc students in maths and computer science are gathering for the fifth annual Heidelberg Laureate Forum.