Clavius Activities at Georgetown Summer of 2017

Clavius group at Georgetown in 2017

List of Clavius mathematicians

Jennifer Ackerman
Michael Ackerman
Tom Banchoff
Adam Bartoszek
Jacob Binoy SJ
Tom Cecil
Lawrence Conlon
Pedro Ferreira SJ
Margaret Freije
Richard Freije
Kathy Hall
James Heitsch
Michele Intermont
Ron Knill
Jack Lutts

Maura Mast
Michael May SJ
Sr Barbara Reynolds SDS
Patrick Ryan
Paul Schweitzer SJ
Dennis Snow
Joanne Snow
James Stasheff
Pedro Suarez SJ
Andrius Tamulis
Carlos Vasco
Nelson Velandia SJ
Julio Vidaurrazaga
Pawel Walczak

Clavius Community Notes

2017 Georgetown Washington, DC
Meeting #55: 25 June to 15 July

At the invitation of Professor Thomas F. Banchoff, Vice President for Global Engagement, and the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Georgetown University, the Clavius group gathered at Georgetown for its fifty-fifth session. We were provided with office space in St. Mary’s Hall and a lecture room in Reiss Hall for our seminars and talks. Also, access to photocopying, printing services, email and the web was provided. Members were housed in the Arrupe apartment complex, an excellent arrangement that made it possible for us to continue our vibrant community life. The group’s housing arrangements and other needs were generously attended to by Bill Huff and Danielle Maduka of the Summer Conference Housing Office at Georgetown. The participants this summer consisted of six Jesuits, one nun, eight married couples, one without spouse and four single lay persons. Eighteen Clavius mathematicians participated in the lectures and seminars along with some faculty members from Georgetown.

Community Activities 2017

June 30, Clavius Faith and Science Day (details below)
July 7, revival of traditional Clavius singalong
July 8, presentation by Binoy about the work of the Loyola Institute of Peace and International Relations in Kochi, India
July 9, Mass, social hour and dinner at the home of Anja and Tom Banchoff in Arlington, VA.
July 11, Presentation by Art Laffin of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker in Washington on his work for peace, social justice, and the eradication of poverty.
June 28 and July 3, Business meetings at which it was decide to hold the next Clavius meeting at the College of the Holy Cross, June 23 – 30, 2018.

Seminars 2017

Working Seminar in Differential Geometry

Meetings were held at 9:30 AM on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
Text Used: S. Sternberg: Curvature in Mathematics and Physics, Dover, 2012
Participants: Julio Vidaurrázaga, John Lutts, Carlos Vasco, Ron Knill, Pete Suarez and Nelson Velandia.
The work was an ongoing endeavor to understand the material. Most of the lecturing was done by Julio Vidaurrázaga and Carlos Vasco.

Differential Geometry Seminar

June 27, 28, 29, July 3, 5, 6, Thomas Cecil, Dupin hypersurfaces
July 10, 11, 12, Patrick Ryan, Remarks on plane hyperbolic geometry
July 7, 13, Thomas Banchoff, Meanders and Hopf degree theory for polyhedral surfaces

Foliations Seminar

July 3, Lawrence Conlon, Topological obstructions to smoothing foliations
June 5, 6, Paul Schweitzer, 4-manifolds with exotic ends that cannot be leaves in foliations of compact 5-manifolds
July 7, Lawrence Conlon, Smoothability of Gabai’s taut foliations
July 10, 11, James Heitsch, Enlargeability, foliations and positive scalar curvature

Topics Seminar

June 28, Barbara Reynolds, Changing software, shifting paradigm: Teaching geometry with interactive geometry software, Sketchpad vs. GeoGebra
June 26, Michael Ackerman, Comparability graphs of semigroups
June 26, Carlos Vasco, Formal mathematics vs. model-theoretic mathematics – I, A response to Hung-Hsi Wu
July 6, Carlos Vasco, Formal mathematics vs. model-theoretic mathematics – II: The three R’s: Readin’, Ritin’ and Rhythmetic vs. A-Rhythmetic.
July 10, Ellen B. Ryan, (McMaster University), My restless shadow: Aging with spirit through contemplative photography
July 11, James Sandefur, (Georgetown University), Population growth models
July 12, Maura Mast, Common sense, common knowledge and mathematics: Reflections on teaching quantitative reasoning
July 12, Nelson Velandia, Calculating trajectories of spinning test particles around a massive rotating body with numerical relativity

CLAVIUS FAITH AND SCIENCE DAY

The lectures for the Clavius Day of Faith and Science on June 30, 2017 were held in St. Mary’s Hall on the Georgetown University campus. The lectures were open to the public without charge. All speakers are members of the Clavius group.

9:30 AM, Reflections on Jewish-Christian faith in the quantum world—indeterminacy and its consequences.
Dr. Paul A. Schweitzer, S.J., Professor of Mathematics, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro
11:00 AM, Incompleteness as Inspiration for Science-Religion Dialogue.
Dr. Binoy Jacob, S.J., Director, Loyola Institute of Peace and International Relations (LIPI), Kaloor, Kochi, India
2:00 PM, A creating God and Big Bang Cosmology: Are They in Conflict? (a tribute to William Stoeger, S.J.)
Dr. Nelson Velandia, S.J., Professor of Physics, Javeriana University, Bogotá
3:30 PM, Causality in the evolution of the Universe
Dr. Pedro M. Guimarães Ferreira, S.J., Professor of Engineering, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro