The May talk will be given by Prof Gregory Sankaran who will be talking about an interesting pure mathematics problem.
What is the most efficient way to pack small spherical objects into a large space? This problem makes sense for spheres of any dimension. It was solved in dimension 2 by bees and in dimension 3 by greengrocers, although the proof in the latter case is very complicated.
Recently the problem was solved in dimensions 8 and 24 by the Ukrainian mathematician Maryna Viazovska. In this talk Prof Sankaran will describe the background to this and say a little about how she did it.
Prof Sankaran is a Professor of Pure Mathematics at the University of Bath. His research is in algebraic geometry, occasionally bordering on number theory or computer science.
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