The Asprey Lectures in Mathematics

Winifred AspreyThe Asprey Distinguished Lecture Series is named in honor of Winifred Asprey (Class of 1938), a much admired professor of mathematics who taught for 38 years at Vassar and was nationally recognized as a spokesperson for mathematics and computer science. The series features the world’s most prominent mathematicians lecturing on current trends and successes.

Photo: Winifred Asprey in a Vassar classroom. c. 1950s.

Lecture Series, 1991 to Present:

  • 2010-11  Trachette Jackson: Mathematical Models of Anti-cancer Therapies
  • 2009–10 Günter Ziegler: Proofs for The Book
  • 2008–09 Margaret Wright: The Remarkable Saga of Linear Programming:  the Problem, the Methods, the Continuing Mysteries
  • 2007–08 Avi Wigderson: A world view through the computational lens
  • 2006–07 Jon Kleinberg; Modeling the Web, Mining my E-mail, and Other  Perspectives on the Information Revolution
  • 2005–06 Ken Ono : Number Theory: Partitions and the Legacy of Dyson and Ramanujan
  • 2004–05 Jeff Weeks : The Shape of Space
  • 2003–04 Hendrik Lenstra : Escher and the Droste Effect
  • 2002–03 Peter Neumann: The Memoirs of Évariste Galois
  • 2000–01 Vaughan Jones: Noncommutative Geometry for Dummies
  • 1999–2000 Sir Michael Atiyah: Atoms, Knots, and Elementary Particles
  • 1997–98 Charles Fefferman: Atoms, Numbers, and Stars
  • 1996–97 Angus MacIntyre: What Can Logic Tell Us About the Real  Exponential Function?
  • 1995–96 Joan Birman: Knots, Differential Equations, and Chaos
  • 1994–95 John H. Conway: Shapes and Symmetries
  • 1993–94 Kenneth Ribet: Fermat's Last Theorem
  • 1992–93 William P. Thurston: An Introduction to the Geometry and  Topology of Three-dimensional Manifolds
  • 1991–92 Stephen Smale: Chaos and the Godel Incompleteness Theorem