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Systolic inequalities on surfaces

Who: Dr. Ranan Banerji, Emeritus Professor, Saint Joseph's University

When and Where: Thursday, March 24, in Barbelin 226 at 11:30.

Lunch prior to colloquium

Abstract:
Raymond Smullyan had set himself the task of figuring out why Number theory is either inconsistent or incomplete. The results of his researches appear in his book, "Diagonalization and Self-Reference" (DSR) and some papers referred to in there. But some of the results have also been written up by him in some excellent puzzle books. Some time ago I had given a talk at St. Joe's about his exposition of Combinatory Logic in his puzzle-book, "To Mock a Mockingbird". This talk will be based on DSR and the puzzle-book, "The Lady or the Tiger". Starting with an abstract version of Goedel's incompleteness theorem, I shall discuss self-reference and diagonilazation with examples of languages allowing these (some are extremely simple and some truly intriguing) and then arrive at a greater abstraction of the incompleteness theorem which is only a step away from Goedel.

The next colloquium is scheduled for April 13th to be given by Roger Warburton. He will be speaking on Mathematical tools in Information Systems: The engine of progress.

Presented by the SJU Math and Computer Science Department.

Sean Forman and Jonathan Hodgson, colloquium committee