Undergraduate Student Speakers

Undergraduate Student Presentations

Saturday 1:30-2:10 PM

Session 1

1:10-1:25 Voting with Cyclic Orders

Abraham Holleran, Gordon College

Josephine Noonan, Gordon College

We studied voting on cyclic orders, focusing on those with four candidates per order. We explored voting systems where a single ballot assigns points to more than one order, reducing the number of ties we get and allowing the voter to specify what they see as the most important aspect in an order. In each system, we explored different kinds of ties and their symmetries through permutations.

1:30-1:45 Sir William Rowan Hamilton

Yinchen You, Gordon College

A Brief talk on Sir William Rowan Hamilton's life and accomplishments. William Rowan Hamilton had an extraordinary childhood and life. He is one of the greatest mathematicians and made important contributions to algebra, optics, and classical mechanics. His mechanical system played an imperative role in the development of electrodynamics, statistical mechanics, and quantum mechanics. He is also famous for the invention of quaternions.

1:50-2:05 Hanna Neumann: a Pure Mathematician Delighting in Application

Caroline Lavoie, Gordon College

This talk will explore the life and legacy of Hanna Neumann, a German algebraist whose young adulthood was marked by the early days of WWII. Her life was filled with many challenges, from writing her thesis in a trailer while caring for her two small children alone to writing letters to her future husband (and fellow mathematician) in secret because he was Jewish. Hanna Neumann’s life has much to show us all about justice and learning in uncertain times.

Session 2

1:30-1:45 Paper on an Individual: Alan Turing

Chase Tipton, Gordon College

Alan Turing's short life was anything but ordinary. Famously known as the mathematician who cracked the German Enigma code during World War II, Alan Turing's work laid the foundation for modern computing. A brief look into Alan Turing's life from his birth to his disputed self-inflicted demise.

1:50-2:05 The Life of Gordon Welchman

Noah Johnson, Gordon College

The presentation will attempt to outline the life of Gordon Welchman as well as the contributions he made to decoding the German Enigma at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.