Next week, I’ll be co-organizing the 6th International Conference on Packing Problems at TU/e, in the Netherlands. I’m looking forward to reconnecting with friends, meeting new colleagues, and, of course, learning some new physics and mathematics along the way. I’m especially excited to present some recent work as part of a history-infused tutorial on random packing algorithms.
This project has taken me in unexpected directions—into the UNC archives, to the story of Robert Kornegay–an African American graduate of NCCU, and later researcher at Bell Labs–and to that of the eclectic and idiosyncratic Lash Miller at the University of Toronto. I hope to eventually develop this material into a publication. For now, here is the opening quote from my talk:
Up till now it has been very difficult to attract pure mathematicians to this and when I have tried to do so I have always got the same kind of answer. Some of them say the problem is too difficult and others say it is too trivial. As for mathematical physicists they washed their hands of it altogether because it is outside of the normal range of the mathematics they use. (Bernal, 1959)
*J. D. Bernal. “The structure of liquids.” Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain 37, 355-393 (1959).
