Prof. Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan
Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics,
Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University
Geometry and Elasticity in Physical Packing Problems
Mathematical packing problems, which have a venerable history,
typically deal with the arrangements of rigid spheres in unbounded
domains. Physical packing (and unpacking) problems have a much shorter
history and deal with the relatively large deformations of soft
extended objects such as strings and membranes. Examples include the
exquisitely orchestrated packing of a long thin strand of DNA into a
cell nucleus or in a virus, the aesthetic drapes of a textile, the
intricate folds in origami, the wrinkles in a drying raisin and the
violent crumpling of a sheet of paper. I will discuss some of the
general and specific features of the statics and dynamics of packing
and their role in the evolution of structures on many different length
scales in the material world.
L. Mahadevan studied engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology-Chennai before turning to applied mathematics and mechanics at Stanford University, where he obtained his PhD. Prior to joining Harvard University in the fall of 2003, he was the inaugural holder of the Schlumberger Chair in Complex Physical Systems in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University, and simultaneously a Professorial Fellow at Trinity College. He has taught and held visiting positions around the world including stints at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris and the University of Chile, Santiago, and is currently the Schlumberger Visiting Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University (2004-07).
Among his awards are the the Society of Engineering Science Young Investigator Medal (2000), the Chaire Paris Sciences at the Ecole Superieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles, Paris (2001), the Chaire Condorcet at the Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris (2001), the G I Taylor Lectureship of the Cambridge Philosophical Society (2001), and the Alan Tayler Lectureship of the Smith Institute and Oxford University (2003).