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SUMMARY:MechE Colloquium: Knots: from reality to mathematics and back
DTSTART:20201013T121500
DTEND:20201013T131500
DTSTAMP:20260925T133249Z
UID:91ebd70fa31590abdcac4105032d04034e3b8f83f074ecdb42576f9a
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Prof. John Maddocks\, Laboratory for Computation and Visualiza
 tion in Mathematics and Mechanics\, EPFL School of Basic Sciences (SB)\, I
 nstitute of Mathematics (MATH)\nIf you would like to attend the talk in BM
  5202\, please register here (on a first-come\, first-served basis). This 
 allows us to limit the number of people in the room and to satisfy contact
  tracing requirements.\n\nFor remote attendance: Zoom link\n\n\nAbstract: 
 \nKnots have an extremely long history. In current times most people inter
 ested in knots are either sailors or climbers or knitters or surgeons or m
 athematicians. The classic mathematical theory of knots is to do with the 
 topology of closed loops\, so that shape is unimportant. More recently a s
 mall literature on the geometric theory of knots has arisen\, where unders
 tanding certain idealised optimal shapes is everything. In parallel there 
 is a (small) literature concerning the mechanics of real knots\, where fri
 ction is everything. I will present some results of my own work on knots s
 tarting with simple mathematical models of the mechanics of knots\, then p
 assing to rather abstract mathematics of idealised optimal geometric shape
 s\, and then returning to the reality of experimental data obtained by the
  group of Prof. P. Reis.\n\nBio:\nBachelor in Mathematics\, University of 
 Glasgow 1974-78\, D.Phil. Balliol College\, Oxford 1978-81\, since 1997 Ch
 air of Applied Analysis\, EPFL\, 2018-2022 Einstein Foundation Berlin Visi
 ting Fellow.\n\nResearch interests are generally in computational and appl
 ied mathematics\, including physical knot theory\, but primarily in the mu
 lti-scale mathematical modelling of DNA.
LOCATION:BM 5202 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==BM%205202
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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