The 2018/19 Collingwood Lecture

Professor Gwyneth Stallard (The Open University)

"The beauty of fractals"

21 November 2018, 4.00pm, CLC013

Professor Stallard's research is in the area of complex dynamics and concerns the iteration of transcendental meromorphic functions. She has made fundamental contributions to the theory of the dynamics of transcendental complex functions and has made important discoveries concerning the dimension of Julia sets. Her insight and originality have established major results in the subject. Her work is characterised by the successful application of hard analytic techniques and, as she readily admits, by stubborness.

Gwyneth has a long standing interest in the issues surrounding women's careers in mathematics and chaired the London Mathematical Society's Women in Mathematics Committee from 2006 to 2015. This work was recognized by the award of an OBE in 2015. In 2016, she was honoured as part of the Suffrage Science Scheme, run by the Medical Research Council's Clinical Sciences Centre. She was among 12 women receiving awards in 2016 to celebrate their scientific achievements in maths and computing, and their ability to inspire others.

Abstract: In this talk we discuss the fascinating structure of geometrical objects known as fractals, beginning with classic fractal sets such as Cantor sets and the von Koch snowflake. We will then explore fractals which arise as Julia sets in the subject of complex dynamics. These are sets on which the iterates of a function behave chaotically and they have structures such as a Cantor bouquet and an infinite spider’s web. Major advances in complex dynamics have often come from applications of powerful techniques in topology and complex analysis – many of which are described in the classic text 'Collingwood and Lohwater'.