CoM | The beguiling cycloid

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Thursday , September 21, 2023
 – Live Presentation with Sarah Hart –

Session at 12 Noon Atlanta time
(check your time here)

Please join us starting 10 minutes before this session using the following button.

CoM Zoom Event

For published CoM presentations please visit the G4G YouTube channel

After this virtual CoM presentation on Zoom, we will meet for an informal social session in a different Zoom space where we can all see each other (see the blue button below).  That Zoom meeting will start around 1pm ET.

Please join the social using the following button:

ZOOM Social Meeting
The beguiling cycloid

It cured Blaise Pascal of the toothache. It kept Galileo thinking for fifty years. It made cameo appearances in both Gulliver’s Travels and Moby-Dick. The cycloid, the curve traced out by a point on the rim of a circle as you roll it along a straight line, has captivated mathematicians for centuries. I’ll give you a guided tour of some of its entrancing properties and how they were discovered, and finish with a glimpse at some other kinds of “roulettes” – curves made by rolling one shape along another.

Sarah Hart is a mathematician and author. She is Professor of Geometry at Gresham College – the oldest mathematics professorship in the UK, dating back to 1597, and is the first woman ever to hold this chair. She is also Professor Emerita of Mathematics at Birkbeck College (University of London) and President of the British Society for the History of Mathematics. Sarah is particularly interested in the cultural, historical and creative impact of mathematics. Her book Once Upon a Prime; the Wondrous Connections between Mathematics and Literature was published in April 2023.

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