Welcome to the homepage of

Dan Silver

Daniel S. Silver
Professor of Mathematics
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
ILB 325
University of South Alabama
Mobile, AL 36688-0002

(251) 460-6264/ 460-7969 FAX
click here to send e-mail.

Here is what you will find inside.

Course information for my undergraduate students in MA 238 (Applied Differential Equations I) is here.
Course information for my graduate students in MA 518 (Linear Algebra I) is here.
The Last Poem of James Clerk Maxwell : the story behind Maxwell's poem which begins: "My soul's an amphicheiral knot upon a liquid vortex wrought." A dramatic presentation sponsored by the newly formed Mobile Mathematical Society. Photos by Susan Williams and full text available here. An article based on this play will appear this fall in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
Sigma-Xi Presentation: "Perhaps I Might Explain This...": The Toys and Humor of James Clerk Maxwell A photographic essay with new images taken last June at Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge and James Clerk Maxwell House, Edinburgh.
Publications: My research is in topology and combinatorial group theory. I am especially interested in knots and links. Since 1995 I have been working with Susan G. Williams on applications of symbolic and algebraic dynamical systems to knot theory. (Click here to see a photograph of us defending our research in Zacatecas, Mexico.) I have also written articles and book reviews on the history of mathematics and science.
Non-serious Publications: I have published comic strips on political and social issues for many years. Here is a sample of some of my work in the Harbinger, an alternative paper that published in Mobile for more than fifteen years.
Mobile Chamber Music Society: For more than ten years I served as President of Mobile Chamber Music Society, a non-profit organization that brings internationally known classical music ensembles to Mobile. I am currently First Vice President, responsible for programming.

Five Minutes of Knot Theory History

Click When Smoke Gets in Your Eyes to watch a 5-minute video of my dangerous attempt to recreate an experiment that P.G. Tait performed for Lord Kelvin in 1867. More about the poisonous session can be found in an article that I wrote recently for American Scientist Knot Theory's Odd Origins. (Paper or e-reprints are available. Please ask!) Co-starring are Susan Williams and University of South Alabama chemistry professor Andrzej Wierzbicki.

Helmholtz worked out the interaction of two smoke rings traveling in the same direction: "If they have the same direction, the foremost widens and travels more slowly, the pursuer shrinks and travels faster, till, finally, if their velocities are not too different, it overtakes the first and penetrates it. Then the same goes on in the opposite order, so that the rings pass through each other alternatively." Click here to see a great image produced by an artist at American Scientist. Pas de deux

Here is a photograph of Ralph Fox which was given to me by my friend and collaborator Wilbur (Red) Whitten. Fox was a pioneer and tireless promoter of knot theory when the subject was still young. An altered version of the photograph appears in John Milnor Collected Papers, Volume 2 (Publish or Perish Press). If you look closely, you can see Fox's signature.

A short, elemenatary exposition on knots and Fox colorings, intended for undergraduates, can be found here. It is titled ``Why Knot?" .