An Excerpt from
"The Best Teacher I Ever Had Was ..."

CMS Summer Meeting, Halifax,

June 13-15, 2004

 

Special Session on (Classical) Analysis

 


Celebration in Honour of

David Borwein's Eightieth Birthday

 

Biographic Sketch, Mathawocky
Sculptures and Full set of photos


Schedule for the June 14thSpecial Session
(Abstracts (and more) Below) in Arts Centre 409

"By Academic FAMILY"

1.30--2.30 ...... Peter Cass (and Jonathan Borwein)

2.30--2.50...... Bruce Watson

2.50--3.30...... Bruce Shawyer

3.30--4.00...... Peter Borwein

"and FRIENDS"

4.00--4.40 ...... Grahame Bennett

4.40--5.00...... Qiji (Jim) Zhu

5.00--5.30...... Heinz Bauschke

5.30--6.00 Michael Overton


7.00--11.00.....Reception(s) for Family and Friends

8.30pm at: Jon and Judi Borwein's

857 Bridges Street (Area Map) Details

Phone: 422-4131

Click to download a set of Zipped Photos

ABSTRACTS

HEINZ BAUSCHKE, University of Guelph
Asymptotic behaviour of the composition of two resolvents

Consider the problem of finding a point in the intersection of two nonempty closed convex sets in a Hilbert space. The method of alternating projections is an iterative attempt to solve this problem. If the intersection of the two sets is nonempty, then-this is a classical result due to Bregman-the sequence generated converges weakly to a common point; otherwise, the sequence either tends to infinity in norm or it possesses two cluster points realizing the gap between the two sets.

In this talk, I will discuss recent extensions of this result concerning the asymptotic behaviour of resolvents and Bregman proximal maps. (Based on joint work with Patrick Combettes (Paris 6), Dominikus Noll (Toulouse), and Simeon Reich (Technion).)

GRAHAME BENNETT, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
Summability for those without

We consider several attractive and easy-to-state problems. These have no apparent connection with Summability Theory, yet their solutions are all centered upon one of David Borwein's favorite topics: Hausdorff matrices.

PETER BORWEIN, Simon Fraser University
Three Highly Computational Problems in Number Theory

A number of classical and not so classical problems in number theory concern finding polynomials with integer coefficients that are small in some norm. These include old chestnuts like the Merit Factor Problem of Golay, Lehmer's Conjecture and Littlewood's (other) Conjecture.

PETER CASS, University of Western Ontario (and JONATHAN BORWEIN, Dalhousie),

A Retrospective on David Borwein's Contribution to Mathematical Research and David and Me (a 1971 ms)

MICHAEL OVERTON, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, NYU
Optimal Stability and Eigenvalue Multiplicity

We consider the problem of minimizing over an affine set of square matrices the maximum of the real parts of the eigenvalues. Such problems are prototypical in robust control and stability analysis. Under nondegeneracy conditions, we show that the multiplicities of the active eigenvalues at a critical matrix remain unchanged under small perturbations of the problem. Furthermore, each distinct active eigenvalue corresponds to a single Jordan block. This behavior is crucial for optimality conditions and numerical methods. Our techniques blend nonsmooth optimization and matrix analysis. (This is joint work with James V. Burke (U. Wash.) and Adrian S. Lewis (SFU).)

BRUCE SHAWYER, Memorial University of Newfoundland
A Tribute and A Plethora of Remarkable Concurrences

This talk is in two parts:

1.     An appreciation of David Borwein as a colleague, problem solver, supervisor and person.

2.     A Plethora of Remarkable Concurrences, dedicated to David Borwein on his 80th birthday.

There are several examples of concurrence in classical triangle geometry. For example, the medians, the altitudes, the angle bisectors and the perpendicular bisectors of the sides. Here we show that there is a plethora of concurrences with some remarkable properties.

BRUCE WATSON, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Discrete Power Series Methods

In 1989 and 1990 papers, Maddox and Armitage discretized the well-known Cesàro and Abel methods. The author extends the definitions to discrete power series and weighted mean methods and gives some abelian and tauberian results.

JIM ZHU, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo.
A variational proof of Birkhoff's theorem on doubly stochastic matrices

I will give a short and self-contained variational proof of Birkhoff's theorem asserting that the extreme points of the convex set of doubly stochastic matrices are the permutation matrices.

 

 

22-06-04