Columbia University Professor Philip Protter

The Department of Applied Mathematics is hosting the seventh annual Karl Menger Lecture and Awards honoring Karl Menger, influential mathematician and professor of mathematics at IIT from 1946 to 1971, on Monday, April 22 and Tuesday, April 23.

The 2013 Karl Menger Lecturer is Philip Protter, professor of statistics at Columbia University, whose lecture is titled “Financial Bubbles Through History, Viewed Through Mathematics.” Protter will discuss the process of anticipating and detecting financial bubbles and explaining how mathematics could, in principle, be used to reduce to wild swings of the markets. The Menger Lecture will begin at 3:30 pm on Monday in the MTCC Auditorium.

Other activities on Monday in the MTCC Ballroom include a Math Club Pizza Lunch talk by Protter on “What Actually Happened in 2008, and Who Is to Blame?” as well as a student research poster session and a “Memories at IIT” session during which IIT alumni and friends of Menger will tell their stories and memories of their time at IIT and with Menger.

On Tuesday morning, Protter will speak on “Can One Detect a Financial Bubble in Real Time?” That afternoon, he will speak on “The Balance Between Theory and Data: A Case Study with Liquidity.”

Protter specializes in probability theory, namely stochastic calculus, weak convergence and limit theorems, stochastic differential equations and Markov processes, stochastic numerics, and mathematical finance. He has authored and co-authored several books and has published more than 100 research papers. Before working at Columbia, he held positions at Cornell University, Purdue University, and Duke University.

All IIT students, faculty, staff, and alumni are invited to all of these events. To see the full schedule, please visit the applied mathematics website. RSVP here.