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A Survey of Diophantine Equations (Edray Goins, Pomona College)
March 27 @ 4:15 pm - 5:30 pm
Title: A Survey of Diophantine Equations
Speaker: Edray Herber Goins, Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, Pomona College
Abstract: There are many beautiful identities involving positive integers. For example, Pythagoras knew $3^2 + 4^2 = 5^2$ while Plato knew $3^3 + 4^3 + 5^3 = 6^3$. Euler discovered $59^4 + 158^4 = 133^4 + 134^4$, and even a famous story involving G.~H.~Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan involves $1^3 + 12^3 = 9^3 + 10^3$. But how does one find such identities? Around the third century, the Greek mathematician Diophantus of Alexandria introduced a systematic study of integer solutions to polynomial equations. In this talk, we’ll focus on various types of so-called Diophantine Equations, discussing such topics as Pythagorean Triples, Pell’s Equations, Elliptic Curves, and Fermat’s Last Theorem.