Western Carolina University

A historian of mathematics who researched a Harvard professor’s role in discovering the planet Neptune will deliver the keynote address at the third annual Smoky Mountain Undergraduate Research Conference on the History of Mathematics at Western Carolina University on Saturday, March 31.

Deborah Kent, a postdoctoral fellow at Simon Fraser University, will talk about “Exploring the Best Joke of the 19th Century: The History of Mathematics in Action” in Room 425 of Stillwell Building at 10 a.m.

The conference, which is free and open to anyone who pre-registers, will continue until 5 p.m. with poster sessions and undergraduate student presentations about the history of mathematics and new research in mathematics explored in the context of its history.

“For instance, last year, someone gave a new definition of tangents that was inspired by previous work done by Euclid more than 2,000 years ago,” said Sloan Despeaux, conference organizer and WCU assistant professor of math and computer science. “The conference provides an outlet for students to present and share what they have learned conducting research about the life and work of a mathematician, development of a mathematical field or problem, a specific context in which mathematics was created, or the application of mathematics to mathematics education.”

The conference is made possible through the support of the Mathematics Association of America and the National Science Foundation as well as Western’s College of Arts and Sciences, Honors College and department of mathematics and computer science.

For more information and registration, check out http://paws.wcu.edu/Despeaux/3smurchom.html or contact Sloan Despeaux at (828) 227-3825 or despeaux@wcu.edu.