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Sponer Lecture Monday talk cancelled

Lecture honors Duke's first female physics faculty member

Ingrid Daubechies, one of the nation's leading mathematicians, will present the second Hertha Sponer Presidential Lecture at Duke Monday at 4 p.m. Schiciano Auditorium, in the Fitzpatrick Center.

 

The Sponer Presidential Lecture designed to highlight prominent women in science, engineering, mathematics and medicine. Margaret Murnane, professor of physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, gave the inaugural address in 2008.

The lecture honors Hertha Sponer, who came to Duke in 1936 to escape the Nazis. She was the first woman on Duke's physics faculty and a renowned researcher in the pathbreaking field of spectroscopy. Over the course of her career, she shared insights with Albert Einstein and other leading physicists.

 

Daubechies, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University, will speak on "Applications woven into the mathematical fabric." She will discuss new branches of applied mathematics that are changing the way mathematicians approach numerical analysis.

 

She also will present the John J. Gergen Memorial Lectures sponsored by the Department of Mathematics. The first talk will explain a branch of applied mathematics known as "wavelets" at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 7, in 128 Math/Physics. Her second talk will be a case study of using wavelets to determine the authenticity of paintings in two Netherlands museums. That talk will be held at noon, Wednesday, April 8, in 116 Old Chemistry.

For more information, contact Leslie Saper at saper@math.duke.edu