•   When: Friday, April 26, 2019 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM
•   Speakers: John Bowers
•   Location: ENGR 4801
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Abstract:
In this talk we present some of the fascinating history of the study of 3-dimensional Euclidean polyhedra focusing on Cauchy’s celebrated rigidity theorem. We then show how to adapt and generalize Cauchy’s argument to prove the rigidity of convex inversive distance circle packings. Such circle packings are closely related to convex hyper-ideal polyhedra in hyperbolic space and our result implies their rigidity.

Short Bio:
John Bowers is an assistant professor of computer science at James Madison University. His research interests are in discrete and comptutational geometry, primarily problems arising from studying the rigidity of circle packings and polyhedra. His teaching intersts are in the mathematical side of the undergraduate CS curriculum.