8:30 AM-9:15 AM
Room: Rio Grande Ballroom
Chair: Rida T. Farouki, University of California, Davis
Cremona transformations -- studied extensively in the early 1900s -- are birational maps. That is, they are rational maps from R2 to R2 (or R3 to R3) for which exact rational inverses exists. The speaker will review a few of the fascinating properties of Cremona transformations, and will also present some beautiful insights that result when Cremona transformations are expressed in terms of the Bernstein polynomial basis. The talk will primarily address Cremona transformations in the plane, and will begin by presenting some important background material on the nature of singularities of rational curves.
Thomas W. Sederberg
Department of Computer Science
Brigham Young University
Created TJF, 5/20/99;Last Updated MMD, 6/21/99