We are home to 30 faculty, four staff, approximately 60 graduate students, several research visitors, and numerous undergraduate students. We offer exciting and challenging programs leading to BMath, MMath and PhD degrees. We nurture a very active research environment and are intensely devoted to both ground-breaking research and excellent teaching.
News
Two Pure Math professors win Outstanding Performance Awards
The awards are given each year to faculty members across the University of Waterloo who demonstrate excellence in teaching and research.
Pure Math PhD student wins Amit and Meena Chakma Award for Exceptional Teaching
The award ($1000), which is given to up to four recipients annually, recognizes excellence in teaching by students, including intellectual vigour, skill in communication and presentation of subject matter, and concern for the needs of students.
Spring 2023 Graduands
Congratulations to Clement Wan, MMath and Eric Boulter, PhD, who convocated in Spring 2023. Best of luck in your future endeavours!
Events
Geometry & Topology Seminar
Yidi Wang, University of Waterloo
Local-global principles on stacky curves and its application in solving generalized Fermat equations.
The primitive solutions of certain generalized Fermat equations, i.e.,
Diophantine equations of the form Ax^p+By^q = Cz^r, can be studied as
integral points on certain stacky curves. In a recent paper by Bhargava and
Poonen, an explicit example of such a curve of genus 1/2 violating
local-global principle for integral points was given. However, a general
description of stacky curves failing the local-global principle is
unknown. In this talk, I will discuss our work on finding the primitive
solutions to equation of the form when (p, q, r) = (2,2,n) by studying local-global principles for integral points on stacky curves constructed from such equations.
The talk is based on a joint project with Juanita Duque-Rosero,
Christopher Keyes, Andrew Kobin, Manami Roy and Soumya Sankar.
MC 5417
Grad Student Colloquium
Nicolas Banks, University of Waterloo
Non-Trivial Theorems with Trivial Proofs
One of the most fruitful things we can do as mathematicians is to think deeply about simple things. As students and researchers, perhaps we come across results with simple proofs and believe that not much can be learned from them. In this talk, I will challenge this misconception by diving into three important, non-trivial theorems with seemingly trivial proofs - Desargue's Theorem of planar geometry, the finite intersection property of compact sets, and Lagrange's Theorem from group theory. These will demonstrate three reasons that a profound truth need not be complicated.
MC 5501
(snacks at 17:00)
Geometry and Topology Seminar
Ababacar Sadikhe Djité, Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dankar & University of Waterloo
Shape Stability of a quadrature surface problem in infinite Riemannian manifolds
In this talk, we revisit a quadrature surface problem in shape optimization. With tools from infinite-dimensional Riemannian geometry, we give simple control over how an optimal shape can be characterized. The framework of the infinite-dimensional Riemannian manifold is essential in the control of optimal geometric shape. The covariant derivative plays a key role in calculating and analyzing the qualitative properties of the shape hessian. Control only depends on the mean curvature of the domain, which is a minimum or a critical point. In the two-dimensional case, Gauss-Bonnet's theorem gives a control within the framework of the algorithm for the minimum.
MC 5417