Press Release

NAVAL ACADEMY ANNOUNCES THE 31st ANNUAL MICHELSON MEMORIAL LECTURE

NOTE TO EDITORS AND REPORTERS: Please call the Naval Academy Public Affairs Office at (410) 293-2292 by 4 p.m., Oct. 4, if you wish to cover the Michelson Memorial Lecture.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. – The Naval Academy Division of Mathematics and Science will host the 31st annual Michelson Memorial Lecture on Wednesday, Oct. 5, at 7:15 p.m. in Mahan Hall. The Michelson Memorial Lecture series is supported by the Naval Academy Class of 1969 and is free of charge and open to the public. Dr. Bernd Sturmfels, Professor of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley and a leading experimentalist among mathematicians will speak on “Tropical Mathematics.”

Dr. Sturmfels received doctoral degrees in Mathematics from the University of Washington, Seattle, and the Technical University Darmstadt, Germany, in 1987. He has authored or edited 15 books and over 200 research articles in the areas of algebraic geometry, combinatorics, symbolic computation and their applications. His honors include a National Young Investigator Fellowship, a Sloan Fellowship, and a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship, a Clay Senior Scholarship, an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Research Prize, and the SIAM von Neumann Lecturership.

The Michelson Memorial Lecture celebrates the accomplishments of Albert Abraham Michelson, America's first Nobel Laureate in science and the academy's most scientifically accomplished graduate. Michelson was a graduate of the Naval Academy Class of 1873. His experiments on the measurement of the speed of light were initiated while he was a military instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy and contributed to his selection as the 1907 Nobel Laureate in Physics. On the Naval Academy campus, the building named after Michelson is home to academic classrooms and scientific laboratories and hosts an outdoor display commemorating Michelson's speed of light measurements.

Visitors may enter through Gate 1 (King George St.) and Gate 3 (Maryland Avenue) and will be required to show a picture ID. Gate 3 will close to pedestrians at 7 p.m. Vehicles without Department of Defense decals are not permitted on the Naval Academy grounds. Handicapped visitors with proper decals and identification are permitted through Gate 1 or Gate 8 for this event. All bags are subject to search.

For further information about the Naval Academy's division of Math and Science, visit www.usna.edu/MathSci/.