Meeting Information

Geometric Algebra

January 21, 2009
American Center for Physics
College Park, MD

Speaker: Alan Bromborsky, Army Research Lab (Retired)  

Time and Location: The talk will start at 1:00 pm.  A Q&A session will follow.  It will be held in one of the first floor conference rooms at the American Center for Physics, One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD.  This is located off River Road, between Kenilworth Ave. and Paint Branch Parkway.  

Abstract:   Today the disciplines of mathematical physics are fragmented into various disciplines such as linear algebra, complex analysis, tensor analysis, differential forms, spinor algebra, etc.  In the 1960's David Hestenes (U of Arizona) proposed that most of mathematical physics could be unified with the Clifford algebra of a real finite dimensional vector space.  He called this specialization Geometric algebra since it provided a highly geometric description of space and time and since that was the term William Kingdon Clifford used to describe his algebra.  The main emphasis of this talk will be to show how Geometric algebra allows one to multiply vectors in a sensible way and how this leads to a very simple description of rotations in n-dimensions and a simple geometric understanding of spinors without using complex vectors or matrices.  

Biography: Alan Bromborsky received a BSEE from NJIT (then the Newark College of Engineering) and a MS Physics from the U of Chicago.  From 1969 to 2001 he work for the Army Research Labs (originally the Harry Diamond Lab) on nuclear weapon's effects (TREE and IEMP), high power electron and ion beams, high power microwave generation (Reflex Triode/Diode and BWO) and effects, and electrical power generation and conditioning for hybrid vehicles (linear diesel alternator).  Since retiring he has been building telescopes and proselytizing geometric algebra/calculus, the linux operating system, the python programming language, and developing a symbolic programming library in python for geometric algebra and calculus.