Zvi Arad

Vernon Wilson Endowed Chair

During the Spring 2009 semester Professor Zvi Arad is the Vernon Wilson Endowed Chair in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Eastern Kentucky University. He will conduct a Seminar in Table Algebras and host a number of invited scholars to come here to present their research to the seminar and collaborate with faculty in the department. Below is a schedule/summary of the Wilson Endowment Seminar Series organized by Professor Arad.

January 26-30, Professor Robert Boltje, University of California, Santa Cruz, Dr. rer. nat. habil., University of Augsburg On Tuesday January 27th and Thursday January 29th, Professor Boltje was scheduled to give a talk to the seminar titled Unique prime factorization in rings of integers and Mackey funtors (see abstract). The talks however had to be cancelled do to the worst ice storm in Kentucky history (see pictures below). Considering that Professor Boltje is from California, he held up very well. The collaboration was great and a good time was had by all (indoors). A lucky bird found a branch without ice Windsor Drive in Richmond

February 2-5, Professor Qing Xiang, University of Delaware Professor Arad introducing the speaker On Tuesday February 3rd, Professor Xiang presented a talk to the seminar titled Modular ranks and Smith normal forms of some incidence matrices (see abstract). Following the talk was dinner at Arlington. Professor Xiang giving his lecture

February 17, Professor Zvi Arad, Eastern Kentucky University, Bar Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel Netanya Academic College, Netany, Israel On Tuesday, February 17 Professor Arad gave a talk to the seminar on The History of the classification of Finite Groups with a cc-subgroup (see abstract). On the Thursday preceding the talk a welcoming reception was held at the Schlingmann's house (see photo below). President Doug Whitlock, Zvi and Rivka Arad, and Provost Buz Piercy Professor Arad during his talk

March 1-8. Professor Harvey Blau, Northern Illinois University On Tuesday, March 3rd, Professor Blau gave an introductory talk A Brief History of Terms and then on Thursday, March 5th, presented a seminar talk on Decomposition of Products in Nilpotent Table Algebras (see abstracts). Pictured below is a gathering at Arlington after Thursday's talk, a bit of Bluegrass at the Schlingmann's home, and atop the pinnacles. Catherine, Dirk, Zvi, Rivka, Liz, and Harvey Dirk on the Fiddle Harvey on the guitar

March 14-21, Professor Pete Johnson, Auburn University On Tuesday, March 17 Professor Johnson presented his talk on "Developments along a strand that started in Euclidean Ramsey Theory I" (see abstract) and on Thursday, March 19 he gave a talk on "A Frobenius Problem in the Gaussian Integers". Below is a picture of Pete during his talk on Thursday.

March 22-25, Professor Jianmin Ma, Oxford College, Emory University On Tuesday, March 24 Professor Ma presented his talk on "Non-Sylmmetric Amorphous Assiociation Schemes" (see abstract) . The photo on the left was taken during the seminar. Following the talk was dinner at Arlington.

April 4-8, Professor Jenö Lehel, University of Memphis (former home of Coach John Calipari)
Professor Lehel presented his talk "Tight embeddings of partial quadrilateral packings" to the seminar on Tuesday, April 7 (see abstract). Following the very nice talk was dinner at Arlington (see picture below).

April 16 - 19, Professor Sung-Yell Song, Iowa State University Professor Song presented a talk to the seminar on Friday, April 17 on "Wreath products of association schemes" (see abstract). Dinner at Arlington followed the nice talk.

April 12-14, Professor Mikhail Muzychuk, Netanya Academic College, Israel On Tuesday, April 28 Professor Mikhail Muzychuk will give a talk on Association Schemes and Table Algebras and on Thursday April 30 he will give a talk On pseudocyclic association schemes (see abstract). The talks will be given at 3:30 in Wallace 447

* The Vernon Wilson Endowed Chair position is funded by the Vernon Wilson Trust and the Endowment Program part of the Commonwealth of Kentucky Regional University Excellence Trust Fund.

Previous Vernon Wilson Endowed Chairs:
Anthony Hilton, Spring 2005
Jenö Lehel, Spring 2007