Devadoss: DaVinci Decoded The Art-Science Gap11:52AM / Monday, February 04, 2008
WILLIAMSTOWN - Satyan L. Devadoss, associate professor of mathematics, will kick off this year's Williams College Faculty Lecture Series with his talk "Reclaiming DaVinci: Art, Visualization, Mathematics." The lecture will be given Thursday, Feb. 7 at 4 p.m. in Wege Auditorium, Science Center.
Today there is a "dualistic tension between the visual arts and scientific research," Devadoss said, but that wasn't always the case. During the Renaissance, art and science were not seen a polar opposites. Instead, they were used as extensions of each other. "This is most notably seen in the works of Leonardo DaVinci," who merged art and science in his paintings, sculptures, inventions, and scientific studies. Devadoss will present concrete ways to bridge the art-science gap once again, through ideas like cartography, origami, and phylogenetics.
At Williams since 2002, Devadoss has taught courses in Knot Theory and Geometric Group Theory. He studies computational geometry and algebraic and geometric topology. Specific research interests include cartography, algebraic geometry, and mathematical origami, among others.
Devadoss' work has appeared in mathematical journals, from Annals of Combinatorics to Computational Geometry: Theory and Applications. He has been invited to give presentation on his work at MIT, the University of Michigan, Boston University, the University of North Carolina, the University of Rutgers, and the University of Pennsylvania.
He is the recipient of two National Science Foundation grants, one for a project on geodetic surfaces and the other for a trip to the 2002 International Conference of Mathematicians in Beijing. In addition, Devadoss has won numerous teaching awards, including a 2007 Henry L. Alder Award for Distinguished Teaching.
Devadoss previously taught at Ohio State University. He received his B.S. from North Central College and his Ph.D. in mathematics from Johns Hopkins University.
Magnus Bernhardsson, associate professor of history, will deliver the second lecture in the series. He will speak on "What is Iraq? Defining the Iraq Nation, 1921-2008" on Thursday, Feb. 14. |
