Events
Stochastics Seminar |
| Time: Mar 31, 2016 (02:00 PM) |
| Location: Parker Hall 322 |
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Details: Speaker: Olav Kallenberg
Title: Some mathematical souvenirs from Sweden
On returning from the 27th Nordic Congress of Mathematicians in Stockholm during the spring break, I want to share some related math history with those who are interested. My usual abstract is replaced by the math quiz below. Quiz:
1. Why is there no Nobel prize in mathematics? Name two math prizes that are usually regarded as more or less equivalent.
2. Name the oldest mathematical research institute in the world, when was it founded, and by whom. Who revived the institute when it was running out of funding?
3. Name the first woman to get a Ph.D. and a professorship in mathematics, when and where was that, and who supervised her and arranged the appointment? What was her area of research?
4. Name three of the oldest and most venerable math journals in the world. When were they founded and who were the founding editors?
5. Name a class of functions essentially containing the exponential function, the error function, and the hyperbolic cosine.
6. Who was the first professor of mathematics at Stockholm University, and what was his area of research? Same questions for the areas of probability and statistics.
7. Name a young, brilliant, charismatic, and eccentric French mathematician, who is considered to have the stature of a pop star, reaching out to the general public.
8. Who were the first to introduce the Brownian motion (process) and the Poisson process, respectively, and in what contexts?
9. Who were the founders of the areas of mathematical finance and collective risk theory (the latter more or less equivalent to actuarial mathematics)?
10. Who was the founder of queuing theory, and who was the first to consider probabilities and distributions relative to the arrival time of a typical customer?
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