Ithaca College

Please join us for a talk by William Dunham, Visiting Professor of Mathematics at Cornell University on Tuesday, November 17, 2015 at 4:00pm in 309 Williams Hall.

This talk should be accessible to any student who has seen calculus.

Among the greatest of mathematicians is Leonhard Euler (1707-1783), whose insight, industry, and ingenuity are unsurpassed in the long history of mathematics.   In this talk we sketch Euler’s life, describe the quantity and quality of his mathematical output, and discuss a few of his discoveries from the realms of number theory, geometry, analysis, and combinatorics.  We then look at a specific theorem: his proof, using integral calculus (!), of what is known as “Euler’s Identity” – i.e.,   .  We should thereby get a sense of Euler’s genius and see why he is rightly regarded as “the Master of Us
All.”

William Dunham is a historian of mathematics who has written four books on the subject:  Journey Through Genius, The Mathematical Universe, Euler: The Master of Us All, and The Calculus Gallery.  He is also featured in the Teaching Company’s DVD course, “Great Thinkers, Great Theorems.” In recent years, Dunham has held visiting positions at Harvard, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and (this semester) Cornell.  After his retirement from a 22-year career as Koehler Professor of Mathematics at Muhlenberg College, he was appointed a Research Associate at Bryn Mawr College.