The Knot Project

What is the Knot Project?

The Knot Project started in 1997 as a team of like minded researchers who felt the need to bring their field of mathematics to a wider audience in exciting and innovative ways.

Jonathan Simon

Jonathan Simon is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Iowa. He is an internationally known researcher on knots, and has been a leader in studying their scientific applications. Jon is Director of the Knot Project.

Web site: http://www.math.uiowa.edu/~jsimon/

Gregory Buck

Gregory Buck is Chair of the Department and Associate Professor of Mathematics at Saint Anselm College. He has published widely in knot theory and celestial mechanics.

Web site: http://www.anselm.edu/academic/mathematics/

Robert Scharein

Robert Scharein received his PhD in computer science from the University of British Columbia in 1998 for developing the computer program KnotPlot, a topological drawing tool for the manipulation and visualization of knots. Rob's KnotPlot Site has hundreds of images of knots, including movies and downloadable goodies. The KnotPlot software is freely available from this site. Rob currently works at the New Media Innovation Centre and the Centre for Experimental and Constructive Mathematics.

Web site: http://www.cecm.sfu.ca/~scharein

Background and experience

All three are well known researchers in the field of knot theory. Both Simon and Buck are the recipients of numerous grants from the National Science Foundation for support of their knot theory research. In March of 1996, Simon and Buck organized a special session of the larger American Mathematical Society meeting in Iowa City. In addition to the special session program, there was a two day workshop for demonstrations and computer method discussions. There were over fifty presentations, by microbiologists and biochemists, physicists, and pure and applied mathematicians. The meeting forged multidisciplinary alliances that have become quite productive. In the spring of 1997, Simon and Buck were invited by the National Coalition for Science Funding to give a demonstration of their research for members of Congress and their staffs --- one of only two mathematics projects chosen out of all NSF funded projects nationwide.

Buck, Simon, and Scharein represent a wide variety of teaching and educational experience --- from the research university to a small liberal arts college to classroom demonstrations at the elementary and secondary level. Simon has given invited short courses on knots at conferences of the American Mathematical Society. Buck has taught pre-schoolers how to braid. They have produced several articles introducing knot theory to a wider audience, see for example the article by Buck and Scharein in the young science magazine Odyssey (October 1997). Scharein's web site devoted to knots has won several awards. He has demoed his software KnotPlot to hundreds of students, of all ages. In August of 1997, Buck co-organized and Scharein gave a plenary talk at the meeting of the International Guild of Knot Tyers at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Other speakers included Vaughn Jones, winner of the Fields Medal (rough equivalent of the Nobel Prize in mathematics) for his work in knot theory. A central aspect of the conference was two days of knot demonstrations for the public, which ranged from computer manipulations of knots to participatory demonstrations of traditional, decorative, and practical knot tying. An article describing the event, with a photograph of Buck amidst a sea of knots, appeared on the front page of the Boston Sunday Globe.

In October of 1998, Buck, Scharein, and Simon gave a presentation at the Association of Science and Technology Centers in Edmonton, Canada. This event garnered a great deal of interest from science centres, and other organizations involved with Science and Math outreach.