School of Mathematics Event

Workshop on Discrete Geometry and the Kepler Problem

Sunday January 17, 1999 to Friday January 22


Location Seminar Room
Simonyi Hall
Institute for Advanced Study
Princeton, New Jersey

Scientific Organizer Gabor Fejes Toth, Mathematical Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Confirmed Participants

Andras Bezdek--Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Karoly Bezdek--Eotvos University
Robert Connelly--Cornell University
John Conway--Princeton University
Samuel Ferguson--University of Michigan
Tom Hales--University of Michigan
Wu-Yi Hsiang--University of California at Berkeley
Wlodzimierz Kuperberg--Auburn University
Jeffrey Lagarias--AT&T Labs - Research
Guenter Rote--Technische Universitat Graz
Neil Sloane--AT&T Shannon Lab.
Salvatore Torquato--Princeton University
Gabor Fejes Toth--Mathematical Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

The workshop started on Sunday, January 17, 1999, at 2 p.m. and continued until approximately 5 p.m. that day. The following days, Monday through Friday, January 22, it began each day at 9:30 a.m. and continued until approximately 5 p.m.

The workshop was co-sponsored by the Institute and the Annals of Mathematics.

The main subject of the workshop was the new computer-assisted proof of the Kepler Conjecture by Tom Hales. (The Kepler Conjecture asserts that the densest packing of Euclidean three space by non-overlapping spheres of identical size is the one we all expect.) Most of the talks and working sessions were organized and scheduled during the workshop, and were on this subject.

Lectures took place in the Simonyi Hall Seminar Room. Every day at 2 p.m. there was a more formal lecture on related subjects as follows:

Sunday
January 17

  • 2 p.m. Tom Hales
    • An Introduction to the Kepler Conjecture

Monday
January 18

  • 2 p.m. Salvatore Torquato
    • Random Packing of Spheres: Statistical-Mechanical Approach

Tuesday
January 19

  • 2 p.m. Wu-Yi Hsiang
    • On the proof of Kepler's conjecture and the dodecahedron conjecture

Wednesday
January 20

  • 2 p.m. Karoly Bezdek
    • On the isoperimetric problems for Voronoi polyhedra of unit ball packings in E^3
  • 2:45 Wlodzimierz Kuperberg
    • Almost tiling the plane by ellipses
  • 4:30 Tom Hales -- Institute Lecture in WOLFENSOHN HALL
    • Cannonballs and Foam

Thursday
January 21

  • 2 p.m. Guenter Rote
    • Matchings between triangulations of a planar set of points
  • 2:45 p.m. Andras Bezdek
    • On efficient packings of E^3 with various convex solids

Friday
January 22

  • 2 p.m. John Conway
    • What are all the best sphere packings in low dimension?

 

 

Date & Time

January 17, 1999 | 12:00am – January 22, 1999 | 12:00am

Categories

Workshop