Rodney Nillsen School of Mathematics and Applied Statistics Austin Keane Building University of Wollongong NSW, AUSTRALIA 2522 email: nillsen@uow.edu.au The year 2012 is the bicentenary of the birth of the celebrated English writer Charles Dickens (d. 1870). Go to the Charles Dickens Page to read about his life and work. "Dr Johnson then turning to me, "Sir (said he), a desire of knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind; and every human being, whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge." -- from James Boswell's Life of Dr Samuel Johnson.

Mathematical books and seminars Mathematical research and exposition The reviews page The current comments page University policy and academic culture Teaching and Learning Ideas and opinion School mathematics and social policy Places and people The book Randomness and Recurrence in Dynamical Systems was published by the Mathematical Association of America in 2010 as volume 31 in the Carus Monographs Series .....Read more about this book, and read more about the ideas in this book. Go to the MATH201 page Read or read about The research-teaching nexus Richard Dawkins and the God hypothesis The irony of American history How to leading-edge your objectives -- read Rod's submission to the Bradley enquiry Pentagons, the golden ratio, and the irrationality of the square root of five The Research & Ideas Page Mathematical quotations Mathematics Teachers' Day at the University of Wollongong On September 9th, 2011, a conference was held at the Catholic University in Ružomberok, Slovakia, in honour of the life and work of the Slovak-Australian mathematician Igor Kluvánek (1931-1993), pictured. You can read a copy of the paper "Igor Kluvánek: his, life, achievements and influence in Australia", given there. You can also read some Igor Kluvánek quotations. The paper was written for a general audience, and as well as covering Igor Kluvánek's achievements in research, also discussed are his exposition of mathematical ideas, his philosophical and religious writings, and his personality. The picture is of the Tatra Mountains, in Slovakia. You may read excerpts from the paper "Changes in culture and purpose in Australian universities: 1988 to the present". This paper was the basis for a seminar presented at the conference held from 5th-6th September 2011 in Badin, Slovakia, on the theme (translated into English) "The University: place of meeting and confrontation between faith and reason". Other seminars also were given in Slovakia. You may download slides from the seminar "Dynamical systems and the Carathéodory definition of a measurable set", given at the Mathematical Institute, Slovak Academy of Sciences. Also, you may download slides from the seminar "Some mathematical analysis without measure theory" given at the University in Banská Bystrica. A seminar was also given at the "Kluvánekfest", held in Ružomberok, see left.