Colloquium: Minimal Surfaces: Past, Present, and Future

Peter McGrath, NCSU

Kirby-Manchester 016

For hundreds of years, mathematicians and physicists have been fascinated by the mathematics of soap films.  This talk will discuss the mathematical realizations—minimal surfaces—of soap films.  Minimal surfaces can be studied from several points of view: physical, geometric, and analytic, and I will discuss some of the developments in the subject over the last two hundred and fifty years, from Euler to the present.

Host:  Leandro Lichtenfelz