Click for the
final presentation schedules.
Click for the
final presentation schedules.
Previous programming experience or advanced calculus are not
required. Good spatial intuition, some trigonometry, and much
geometrical curiosity are prerequisites. Some elementary
physics and calculus are recommended.
Experienced programmers are also welcome, but they will complete an
individual course of study. Detailed tutorials and supervised practice
sessions will augment the course for novice programmers.
George Francis joined the University of Illinois faculty in 1968.
His research papers are in low-dimensional topology, geometry, analysis,
statistics, control theory, and geometrical computer graphics.
In addition to courses in these fields, he
has taught logic, mathematical biology, and catastrophe theory. Professor
Francis' work on
descriptive topology, A Topological Picturebook
(Springer Verlag, 1987, PB 2006) has been translated into Japanese and Russian.
He is a professor in the Mathematics Department, the Beckman Institute,
and the Campus Honors Program, and he is a senior research scientist
at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications,
where he collaborates with computer artists and graphics programmers
on immersive virtual environments at SIGGRAPH and Supercomputing Conferences.
Students in this tutorial/lab course learn basic geometrical
programming in the REU-Lab of the Mathematics Department.
Novice programmers may use fully functional real time
interactive animations (RTICA) to explore the 4th dimension,
non-Euclidean geometries, fractals, cellular automata, chaotic
dynamical systems etc. Expert programmers are encouraged to
modify or (re)write these, and to create new ones for future
Math 198 students.