I Prove a Theorem and the House Expands: Geometry and Poetry

We are delighted that famed author and mathematician Jordan Ellenberg will be joining us for a virtual talk this semester.  In his words, our speaker wrote a book about geometry and found himself, surprisingly, constantly talking about poetry.  In this talk, he will cover various subjects, including Wordsworth’s friendship with the mathematician William Rowan Hamilton; Andrei Markov’s random walk through Eugene Onegin and the idea of mechanical language production; what geometry and poetry seem to look for in each other; and the vision of geometry expressed in the poem by Rita Dove, whence his talk title originates.

Sponsored by the Franke Program in Science and the Humanities Distinguished Speaker Series
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