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
53rd annual COSY conference a success
More than 100 researchers and students from across Canada and around the world attended the 53rd annual Canadian Operator Algebras Symposium (COSY), which took place from May 26-30 at the University of Waterloo.
Pure Math Department celebrates undergraduate achievement at awards tea
On March 24, the department of Pure Mathematics held its annual Undergraduate Awards Tea, an event that celebrates the accomplishments of its remarkable undergraduate students.
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.
Events
Pure Math Colloquium
Patrick Naylor, McMaster University
Doubling Gluck twists
The Gluck twist of an embedded 2-sphere in the 4-sphere is a 4-manifold that is homeomorphic but not obviously diffeomorphic to the 4-sphere. Despite considerable study, these strange manifolds have remained a long-standing source of potential counterexamples to the only remaining case of the Poincaré conjecture. In this talk, I will give an overview of this conjecture, a visual introduction to 2-dimensional knot theory, and describe conditions that guarantee that (some) Gluck twists are standard, i.e., diffeomorphic to the 4-sphere. This is based on joint work with Dave Gabai and Hannah Schwartz.
MC 5501
Number Theory Seminar
Stanley Xiao, University of Northern British Columbia
Elliptic curves admitting a rational isogeny of prime degree, ordered by conductor
We consider explicit parametrizations of rational points on the modular curves X_0(p) for p in {2,3,5,7}, which corresponds to elliptic curves E/Q$ admitting a rational isogeny of degree p, and consider conductor polynomials of such curves. Conductor polynomials are polynomial divisors of the discriminant which more closely approximate the conductors of elliptic curves. By using results on almost-prime values of polynomials, including recent breakthrough work of Ben Green and Mehtaab Sawhney, we count such curves whose conductors have the least number of distinct prime factors, ordered by conductor. This is joint work with Alia Hamieh and Fatma Cicek.
MC 5417
Computability Learning Seminar
Elan Roth, University of Waterloo
A Continuation of Random Binary Sequences
We'll return to ML- and 1-Randomness and prove their equivalence. First, we will define some necessary machinery such as information content measures and the KC theorem.
MC 5403