Science Seminar

Infinity is a concept which has long captivated the collective imagination of humanity: from poets and theologians to scientists and mathematicians. In this talk, I will discuss the advent of "completed" infinity in mathematics via Georg Cantor's work followed by a discussion of the relevance of this concept to the spaces invented by David Hilbert and Stefan Banach. As time permits, I will talk about my own research in the geometry of Banach spaces and why I find these questions interesting. Since this is a talk intended for a general audience, I plan to focus on the history and biographies of these mathematicians while mostly keeping rigorous definitions and proofs out of it. For the little bit of math there is in the talk, if you've had differential equations and linear algebra, you'll be fine!