Reconstruction Problems in Geometry

Series
Research Horizons Seminar
Time
Wednesday, September 3, 2014 - 12:00pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Dr. Dan Margalit – Georgia Tech Math Department – http://people.math.gatech.edu/~dmargalit7/
Organizer
Alexander Hoyer
Here is a classical theorem. Consider a bijection (just a set map!) from the Euclidean plane to itself that takes 0 to 0 and takes the points on an arbitrary line to the points on a (possibly different line). The theorem is that such a bijection always comes from a linear map. I'll discuss various generalizations of this theorem in geometry, topology, and algebra, ending with a discussion of some recent, related research on the topology of surfaces.