BC TCD Annual Colloquium Series

A special pair of talks will take place on the morning of Tuesday, April 29 in Maloney 560.  BC is in the process of extending its connections with Trinity College Dublin (TCD), and we are building on this in math by organizing a series of annual colloquia featuring faculty at BC and TCD, alternating between TCD and BC.  This year our speakers are Prof. Katrin Wendland of TCD and our very own Kathryn Lindsey.  Their titles and abstracts are below.  

Schedule for the BC-TCD Colloquium Series, April 29, 2025 at Boston College, Maloney 560
10 am Prof. Katrin Wendland (TCD) Title: A family of Kummer-like K3 surfaces and their symmetries
Abstract:  K3 surfaces are complex manifolds whose geometric properties have fascinated mathematicians and theoretical physics for more than one and a half centuries. Among the examples that were first investigated are the Kummer surfaces, which may be realized by means of a Z2-orbifold construction. The talk gives an introduction to K3 surfaces, focussing on the Z3-orbifold cousins of the Kummer surfaces. We provide an analysis of these Kummer-like surfaces that is analogous to Nikulin's extensive studies of Kummer surfaces. We also give a classification of all symmetries of these special K3 surfaces, including their concrete realization in terms of subgroups of the Mathieu groups M12 and M24.
11:20 am Prof. Kathryn Lindsey (BC) Title: The Thurston Set: Teapots, Dragons, and Rings of Fire
Abstract:The Thurston set is a strikingly beautiful, fractal-like subset of the complex plane whose geometry, topology, and arithmetic reveal deep connections across several mathematical domains. It bridges the theories of interval self-maps, iterated function systems, and power series with prescribed coefficient patterns. I will discuss recent progress in understanding its structure and the new insights it provides into these areas—particularly its implications for the Mandelbrot set. I will also highlight some open questions that remain mysterious.