Pi Mu Epsilon induction to feature talk by math scholar
"Graphs and Symmetry," a talk by Hamilton College Professor Debra Boutin, will be a highlight of the annual induction ceremony for Skidmore's New York Alpha Theta Chapter of Pi Mu Epsilon (PME), the national mathematics honor society, on Wednesday, March 24.
Scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m. in Emerson Auditorium of Palamountain Hall, the ceremony will recognize the achievements of the 17 new student members of the chapter. Boutin also will be inducted into the Skidmore chapter.
Incorporated in 1914, PME promotes scholarly activity in mathematics.
Boutin will use the talk to provide intuition about graphs, their symmetries, and a few of the questions that have been studied recently. She said, "No background in graph theory will be assumed."
Boutin explained, "A graph is a collection of objects (called vertices) with a relationship (called an edge) between some pairs of objects. For instance, the vertices could be Facebook pages with an edge between them if they are Facebook friends. The vertices could be computers with an edge between them if they have a direct cable connection. We often 'draw' graphs to help our intuition about their structure.
"However, the drawing is not a required part of the graph and a given graph can have many different drawings. We can talk about the symmetries of a given graph. A symmetry is a rearrangement of the objects that preserves the relationships. If we have a 'nice' graph drawing, we may be able to 'see' some of the symmetries in the same way we can see the symmetries of a square or a pentagon. However, many of the symmetries may not be visible in this way.
"Questions that have been asked about graphs and their symmetries in recent years include the following:
"Can a given graph be embedded in Euclidean space (of some dimension) so that its Euclidean symmetries are precisely its graph symmetries? If so, how many dimensions are required?
"What is a smallest set of vertices with the property that every symmetry is uniquely determined by its action on this set of vertices? I will introduce these concepts, give examples to build intuition, and show a few of the current results."
A graduate of Springfield Technical Community College, Smith College (Phi Beta Kappa), and Cornell University, Boutin taught at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., before joining the Hamilton faculty in 1999. She has published a number of papers on mathematics topics in academic or scholarly journals, and has given presentations at a number of conferences in the U.S. and abroad.
In 2008 she was the inaugural recipient of Hamilton's Dean's Scholarly Achievement Award for Early Career Achievement.