November 2, 2010
Everyone knows our lives are all chaotic and unpredictable in the long run, and the most successful people are those who are good at plan B. Scientists were probably the last people to find out about chaos. Chaos is an area of science and mathematics that describes situations in which small changes can cascade into larger and larger long-term effects. Chaos is a battle between stability and instability. Dr. Yorke will describe phenomena that arise in this battle.
Bio
Dr. James A. Yorke is Distinguished University Professor of the Departments of Mathematics and Physics and the Institute for Physical Science and Technology at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland. Since 2007 he has been Chair of the Mathematics Department, and in 1988-2001 he was Director of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology. He won the Japan Prize Laureate in Science and Technology in 2003. He is a Guggenheim Fellow (1980), a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1998), and a Fellow of the American Physical Society (2003). Other academic honors include: the Annual Chaim Weizmann Memorial Lecture at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel (1997), Centennial Speaker for the American Physical Society (1998-1999), Norbert Wiener Lecturer at Tufts University (2006), Marker Lecturer in Mathematics at Pennsylvania State University (2006). He is the coauthor of three books on chaos and two books on dynamics. He attained his undergraduate degree with major in Mathematics from Columbia University (1963), and Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Maryland (1966). His current research interests include: period-doubling cascades galore; better methods for determining the genetic sequence of large genomes; modeling the population dynamics of HIV; chaos and weather prediction; a mathematical theory of observation; topological horseshoes and other topological phenomena; explosions of chaotic sets as a parameter is varied; tools for the numerical exploration of nonlinear dynamical systems; a physical realization of the Plykin attractor.
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Colloquia are held Tuesdays in Room 1410 at 4:00 pm (preceded by light refreshments at 3:30). If you have additional questions, please call 301-405-5946.