Prominent Mathematician to Give Annual Sulski Memorial Lecture at Holy Cross

WORCESTER, Mass. – Rev. Paul A. Schweitzer, S. J., a member of the College of the Holy Cross class of 1958 and a professor of mathematics at the Pontificia Universidade Catolica (PUC), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, will give the 16th annual Leonard C. Sulski Memorial Lecture in Mathematics on Tuesday, March 24 at 8 p.m. in room 519 of the Hogan Campus Center at the College.  The lecture, titled “Surfaces and 3-dimensional Manifolds: How Geometry Comes to the Aid of Topology,” is free and open to the public.

After graduating from Holy Cross, Fr. Schweitzer earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton University and has been a member of the faculty at PUC since 1971. In 1983, Fr. Schweitzer was awarded an honorary degree from Holy Cross for his distinguished research in topology, and his work in developing the mathematics program at PUC.

Fr. Schweitzer will discuss the recent work of the Russian mathematician G. Perelman in proving Thurston’s geometrization conjecture.  A consequence of Thurston’s conjecture is one of the most famous problems in mathematics, the Poincaré conjecture for which Perelman has received much acclaim.  Fr. Schweitzer’s lecture will describe this problem and its solution in a manner accessible to a general mathematical audience.

The annual lecture series is a tribute to Professor Sulski, who taught in the mathematics department at Holy Cross from 1965 until his untimely death from leukemia in 1991.

The lecture will be preceded by a dinner co-sponsored by the department of mathematics and computer science and the Mathematical Association of America in the Hogan Campus Center. For more information about the dinner or the event contact Tom Cecil, professor of mathematics at Holy Cross and organizer of the event, at 508-793-2719 or e-mail tcecil@holycross.edu before March 16.