Topology Seminar

The Topology Seminar will meet on Fridays, usually alternating with the AGC seminar, 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. in room MB 124 (Mathematics Building). Below you find the information for the topology talks. Everybody who is interested is invited to join. Please contact Jens Harlander (jensharlander@boisestate.edu) for more information.

You can also view selected Topology Seminar Archives.

Fall 2019

Date: September 6, 2019

Speaker: Allison Arnold-Roksandich, BSU
Title: Normal Mathematics
Abstract: What is normal? It changes based upon what context we’re in. The goal of this talk is to discuss these varying definitions and see the thread that runs between them. This is not a complete thread at this time, but should be a nice start point for the discussion.

Speaker: Kennedy Courtney, BSU
Title: Index and the Poincare-Hopf Theorem
Abstract: We will take a look at vector fields and color mappings as geometric realizations of a complex function.  We will explore methods of finding the index of a closed curve in the domain of a meromorphic function. This will lead to the Poincare-Hopf Theorem:

Let $V$ be a vector field on a manifold without boundary such that $V$ has only isolated zeros. Then the number of zeros of the vector field is equal to the Euler characteristic of the manifold.

Date: November 22, 2019
Speaker: Uwe Kaiser, BSU
Title: Quantum Modular Forms and Knot Invariants