MATH 7510 - Berstein Seminar in Discrete and Computational Geometry

Bob Connelly, fall 2015.

Israel Berstein was very much interested in geometry as well as topology, and I would like to restart the geometry tradition. I will suggest topics and papers that students can report on in discrete and computational geometry such as: basic rigidity of convex polyhedra ala Cauchy, Dehn and A. D. Alexandrov, universal rigidity of tensegrity and bar and joint frameworks, universal rigidity of frameworks, flexible surfaces, mechanisms, origami constructions ala Eric Demaine, the carpenter's rule problem, the Kneser-Poulsen conjecture, sphere packing and covering problems, low-rank matrix completion problems, and many more.