Ludwig Schläfli lecture 2021

Monday October 18th, 2021, 18:15
University of Bern, Main Building, Hochschulstrasse 4, Room 201.
Joshua Greene
 Boston College
Title: Peg Problems

At a conference in Solothurn in 1911, Otto Toeplitz asked whether every Jordan curve in the plane contains the vertices of a square. Toeplitz's question is still open, but it has inspired many amusing variations and interesting partial results. I will survey some of these and steer towards a related result of mine with Andrew Lobb; its proof involves symplectic geometry in a surprising way.

The Ludwig Schläfli lecture takes place every two years since 2006 (in even years) at the University of Bern; it is a joint colloquium with the University of Fribourg, who organizes the Plancherel Lectures in odd years. Due to the corona pandemic, last year's lecture was postponed, so even and odd have swapped. The lecture is named after Ludwig Schläfli, who was a member of the mathematics department of the University of Bern between 1848 and 1891.

Directions to the lecture hall: in the Bern railway station follow signs to Universität and take the exit on the North via elevator to Grosse Schanze (not the city exit). After leaving the elevator and turning your back to the city, you face two large, 19th-century-style buildings. The rightmost one is the Hauptgebäude, where room 201 is on the second floor in the Eastern wing.

For any additional information please e-mail Sebastian Baader.

Past Lectures:
2018: Tamar Ziegler (Hebrew University)
(2016 Schläfli lecture was absorbed into Einstein Lectures by Martin Hairer)
2014: Gérard Besson (Grenoble)
2012: Albrecht Böttcher (Chemnitz)
2010: Bart M. ter Haar Romeney (Eindhoven)
2008: Günter M. Ziegler (TU Berlin)
2006: Oleg Viro (Uppsala)
Design by Emanuele Delucchi