Eminent Mathematician to Give Annual Sulski Memorial Lecture at Holy Cross

Carolyn S. Gordon, the Benjamin Cheney Professor of Mathematics at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., will give the 18th annual Leonard C. Sulski Memorial Lecture in Mathematics on Wednesday, March 16, at 8 p.m. in Room 519 of the Hogan Campus Center at the College of the Holy Cross. The lecture, titled “You Can’t Hear the Shape of a Drum,” is free and open to the public.

A distinguished mathematician, Gordon received her doctorate in mathematics from Washington University in St. Louis in 1979 and has taught at Dartmouth since 1992. She has won numerous grants and awards, including the prestigious Chauvenet Prize, awarded by the American Mathematical Society in 2001.

Gordon, whose research centers on Riemannian geometry—specifically inverse spectral problems and the geometry of Lie groups—has published more than 50 articles, including a well-known paper in 1992 (co-authored with David Webb and Scott Wolpert) that provided a negative answer to the famous question of mathematician Mark Kac: “Can one hear the shape of a drum?” In her talk, she will discuss this question and its answer in a manner accessible to a general mathematics audience. 

The annual lecture series is a tribute to Professor Sulski who taught in the mathematics and computer science department at Holy Cross from 1965 until his untimely death from leukemia in 1991.

For more information, contact Tom Cecil, professor of mathematics at Holy Cross and organizer of the event, at 508-793-2719.