Hyderabad, India. The exhibits area at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) had only about two dozen booths, but they included a variety of societies, publishers, institutions, and retailers.
The Cambridge University Press exhibit included an array of books published by the Mathematical Association of America.
Congress attendees could purchase autographed copies of the book Optimal Transport by 2010 Fields Medalist Cédric Villani at the Springer Verlag GMBH booth.
A mathematician at the Mathematical Society of Japan exhibit explains a fabric model of a five-dimensional surface—the moduli space of equilateral pentagons. It was created by sewing together 24 regular pentagons so that four faces meet at each vertex and the resulting surface has four tunnels.
Alice Peters holds up a copy of Mathematical People, edited by Donald J. Albers and Gerald L. Alexanderson and published by A K Peters. A publisher of mathematics books, A K Peters is now part of CRC Press, a member of the Taylor & Francis Group.
Colorful wooden toys were on display and available for purchase at the Crafts Council of Andhra Pradesh booth.
Strings of pearl were on sale not only in the exhibit hall but also in shops in the Hyderabad International Convention Centre and in the adjoining hotel. There was no shortage of customers.
The next ICM will be held in Seoul, Korea, in 2014.
Photos by I. Peterson
"A mathematician at the Mathematical Society of Japan exhibit explains a fabric model of a five-dimensional surface—the moduli space of equilateral pentagons. It was created by sewing together 24 regular pentagons so that four faces meet at each vertex and the resulting surface has four tunnels."
ReplyDeleteIvars, I'm confused. By definition, a surface is 2-dimensional, and the sewing description certainly creates a 2-dimensional object. And google tells me that the moduli space of equilateral pentagons is a surface of genus 4. So what mathematical aspect of this is five-dimensional?
I might have misunderstood what I was told. However, I can confirm that the object is a surface of genus 4 (I explored all four tunnels by hand).
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