IMA Public Lecture Series

The IMA has been offering more public lectures in order to raise awareness of the impact of mathematical research on everyday life. The first IMA public lecture, which took place in April 1998, was given by Ian Stewart. Stewart, who writes the mathematical column in Scientific American, is an accomplished mathematician. He has written several popular books with strong mathematical themes. Other lecturers in this series include Benoit Mandelbrot and Charles Peskin.

For the academic year 2003-04, the IMA is offering 4 public lectures. The first lecture was given on September 15, 2003, by Leroy Hood, president of the Institute for Systems Biology. His talk, entitled "After the Human Genome Project: Systems Biology and Predictive, Preventive and Personalized Medicine", outlines the next wave of interdisciplinary research in biological science that will take genome data into predictive models. In particular, his talk describes where mathematics is needed to make this push possible.

Richard Tapia, Noah Harding professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice University, delivered a wildly entertaining lecture about the mathematics of drag racing on November 20, 2003. His talk was attended not only by audience from the university community, but also by members of a Twin Cities drag racing club, who sport their club jacket at the talk. We were delighted to see so many young people in the audience, including several students from nearby elementary and highschools.