We will be celebrating the discovery of 'The Hat', a tile which tiles only aperiodically, on the 20th and 21st July here in the Mathematical Institute, Oxford. Come and join us!
The theory of tilings in the plane touches on diverse areas of mathematics, physics and beyond. Aperiodic sets of tiles, such as the famous Penrose tiling that you see as you walk into the Mathematical Institute, admit tilings of the plane without any translational symmetry.
The Penrose tiling is made of two elementary shapes, or tiles, and mathematicians have long wondered about the existence of a single tile that could tile the plane aperiodically. Earlier this year such a shape was discovered: the hat! This hat turned out to be the first of a whole family, and is being celebrated across a two-day meeting in Oxford.
Confirmed speakers include Roger Penrose (Oxford), Rachel Greenfeld (Institute for Advanced Study), Jarkko Kari (Turku), Natalie Priebe-Frank (Vassar), Lorenzo Sadun (UT Austin), Marjorie Senechal (Smith College), and the authors of The Hat pre-print. There will be space for a small number of contributed talks.
The first day will consist of talks accessible to the public, ending in a panel discussion (register separately) between the speakers, chaired by Dr Henna Koivusalo (Bristol). The second day will be colloquium-style talks aimed at the broadest possible audience of mathematicians and physicists. There will also be exhibits by a number of invited artists, and activities related to aperiodic tilings.
The event is free and open to the public. There will be funding available to cover the travel and accommodation costs of PhD students, Postdocs, and Early Career Researchers, courtesy of the Institute of Physics' Theory of Condensed Matter group and the Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research.
To register please visit the dedicated website
For more information, please contact the organisers: Felix Flicker (@email), Nick Jones (@email), Henna Koivusalo (@email), and Mike Whittaker (@email).