Probability is the theme during A.D. White Professor's first visit

David Aldous, professor of statistics at the University of California-Berkeley, will give a free public lecture at Cornell during his first visit as an Andrew D. White Visiting Professor. The lecture, "Probability, Statistical Physics and Combinatorial Optimization," will be delivered Thursday, March 3, at 4:15 p.m. in Bache Auditorium in Malott Hall on campus. Aldous also will lead a probability seminar on "A Tractable Complex Network Model," on Monday, Feb. 28 at 4 p.m. in Malott Hall, room 406.

Aldous' interests are in discrete probability and its applications to the theory of algorithms, random combinatorial objects, random walks and probability models in physics and biology.

Aldous is the author of Probability Approximations via the Poisson Clumping Heuristic. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the recipient of the Rollo Davidson and Loeve Prizes. For more information on his work, visit http://128.32.135.2/users/aldous/.

Professors-at-large are non-resident, short-term faculty, each appointed for a six-year period, during which time they are generally required to make two two-week visits to the Ithaca campus. They do not have to be academics, though most appointees hail from teaching and research institutions. For more information about the A.D. White Professors-at-Large Program and its participants, contact Gerri Jones at 255-0832.