Natural tilings: from hard rock to soft cells - Gábor Domokos

Speaker
Gábor Domokos
Event date
Event time
17:00 - 18:00
Venue
Mathematical Institute
Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road
Oxford
OX2 6GG
Venue details

Lecture Theatre 1

Event type
Lectures and seminars
Event cost
Free
Disabled access?
Yes
Booking required
Required

Gábor Domokos will use the geometric theory of tilings to describe natural patterns ranging from nanoscale to planetary scale, appearing in physics, biology, and geology.

Rock fragments can be modelled by polyhedra having, on average, six flat faces and eight sharp vertices. If we depart from polyhedra and admit curved faces then we can tile space without any sharp corners with a new class of shapes, called soft cells, which appear in both living and non-living nature. Mathematics is learning from nature.

Gábor Domokos is a research professor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. He is best known for proving a conjecture of V.I. Arnold by constructing, with Péter Várkonyi, the Gömböc, the first homogeneous, convex shape with just one stable and one unstable static equilibrium.

Please email [email protected] to register to attend in person.

The lecture will be broadcast on the Oxford Mathematics YouTube Channel on Thursday 22 May at 5-6pm and any time after (no need to register for the online version).

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.