SMS scnews item created by Alex Casella at Fri 1 Apr 2016 1819
Type: Seminar
Distribution: World
Expiry: 1 Jul 2016
Calendar1: 4 Apr 2016 1700-1800
CalLoc1: Carslaw 535A
CalTitle1: MaPSS Seminar
Auth: casella@10.16.68.41 (acas5565) in SMS-WASM

# MaPSS: Mathematical Postgraduate Seminar Series: David Lee -- Diophantine Approximation and Liouville’s Number

Dear All,

We are delighted to present the MaPSS Seminar topic of Monday 4th April; please see the
abstract below.

**From this Semester the Seminar will always run on Monday, at 5:00pm in 535A**

Following the talk, there will be pizza on offer.

Speaker: David Lee (Sydney University)

Title: Diophantine Approximation and Liouville’s Number

Abstract: A transcendental number is a number in the complex numbers that is not a root
of any polynomial with rational coefficients.  In other words it is not algebraic of any
degree.

Showing that a number is transcendental is not a trivial task.  However Liouville
realised that there was a connection with algebraic numbers and approximating by
rationals.  This connection might seem odd at first however it is one of the main tools
used in showing the existence of transcendental numbers.