The Poincaré Conjecture or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Lock My Bike
Channel: Nerd Nite East Bay
Date: 2014-01-31

Kate Poirier at Nerd Nite East Bay #8, The New Parkway, 27-May-2013

At the beginning of the 20th century, Henri Poincaré, a French mathematician, stated a conjecture that would stump the mathematics world for a hundred years. At the beginning of the 21st century, Grigori Perelman, a Russian mathematician, announced a proof of Poincaré's conjecture. Around the SAME TIME, Kate Poirier, a young mathematics student in Toronto, Canada, had her bike stolen. Coincidence? Perhaps. In this talk, we examine the statement of the conjecture, its history, and what, if anything, its proof has to do with bike theft. It's a story of math, and love, and bikes...but mostly math. No mathematical expertise will be required, but some experience locking your bike may come in handy. We'll make broad, uninformed, and likely wildly inaccurate claims about the shape of the universe, so any actual physics you know may count against you.

Kate Poirier got her start as a flaky art student in Toronto. She later learned that mathematicians can also spend all day drawing pictures, and they don't even have to be any good at it to be taken seriously! She got her Ph.D. in math at the City University of New York and is currently a visiting assistant professor in the math department at UC Berkeley. She has four bikes as well as one cat, whose name is Batman.

Credits
Bosses: Rick Karnesky and Rebecca Cohen
Video Editor: Ami Eaton
Videography: Ami Eaton and J.C. Cooper
Audio Recording: Katelyn Knight
Additional Thanks: Oakland Nights Live, Amber Crabbe, and Kishore Hari