The Henry Seely White Lecture Series is an annual series of lectures featuring the country’s most prominent figures in the mathematical sciences. The lecture series is in honor of Henry Seely White (1861-1943), who was appointed Professor and Chair of the Vassar Mathematics Department in 1904. Quoting from the department history written by John McCleary:
“White finished his undergraduate studies at Wesleyan University in 1882 and went to Göttingen where he received a PhD in 1891 under Felix Klein (1849-1925). White taught at Clark University for two years before he was called to Northwestern University where he worked until joining the Vassar faculty in 1905. In Chicago he was involved in organizing the first International Congress of Mathematicians, which took place in conjunction with the famous World Exposition of 1893. White was instrumental in bringing Klein to lecture at the World’s Fair. A distinguished geometer, White served as the president of the American Mathematical Society 1906-1908 and he was named a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in 1915.”
2025-26 Henry Seely White Lectures
Coming soon!
Past Henry Seely White Lectures
- 2013-14: Loki Natarajan, University of California San Diego, Biomedical Research from Cell to Community: a Statistician’s Perspective
- 2014-15: Frank Morgan, Williams College, Math Chat TV
- 2015-16: Susan Murphy, University of Michigan, Healing with Data: Adaptive Interventions
- 2017-18: Megan Price, Human Rights Data Analysis Group, Does the Truth Matter? How data analysis can contribute to accountability
- 2023-24: Bhramar Mukherjee, University of Michigan, The Data Struggle Unseen
- 2024-25: Xiao-Li Meng, Harvard University, Learning, Teaching, and Communication in the Age of AI: Wisdom and Warnings from Harvard Data Science Review (Or: Are you smarter than GPT-4?)