DMS Colloquium: Dr. Annalisa Crannell

PLEASE NOTE:

DATE: WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27

TIME: 3:00

Speaker: Dr. Annalisa Crannell, Franklin & Marshall College (Lancaster, PA)

Title: Drawing Conclusions from Drawing a Square

Abstract: The Renaissance famously brought us amazingly realistic perspective art. Creating that art was the spark from which projective geometry caught fire and grew. This talk looks directly at projective geometry as a tool to illuminate the way we see the world around us, whether we look with our eyes, with our cameras, or with the computer (via our favorite animated movies). One of the surprising results of projective geometry is that it implies that every quadrangle (whether convex or not) is the perspective image of a square. We will describe implications of this result for computer vision, for photogrammetry, for applications of piecewise planar cones, and of course for perspective art and projective geometry.

Short Bio:

Annalisa Crannell is the Carmie L. and Beatrice J. Creitz Professor of Mathematics at
Franklin & Marshall College and recipient of both her college’s and the MAA's
distinguished teaching awards. Her early research was in topological dynamical
systems (also known as "Chaos Theory"), but she has become active in working with
mathematicians and artists on Projective Geometry applied to Perspective Art.
Together with mathematician/artists Marc Frantz and Fumiko Futamura, she is the
author of Perspective and Projective Geometry and Viewpoints: Mathematical
Perspective and Fractal Geometry in Art. She especially enjoys talking to nonmathematicians who haven't (yet) learned where the most beautiful aspects of the
subject lie.