On Thursday November 9, 2000, Ron Sperber (SUNY Binghamton) presented a colloquium entitled "Fermat , Prime Numbers and Encryption" to a group of Ithaca College students and faculty. Junior and senior mathematics majors from Ithaca College comprised the bulk of the student audience. Also in attendance were Dave Brown and James Belk, two graduate students from Cornell University. The talk included some historical background along with the mathematics behind some of the encryption algorithms in use today. Ron did a very good job in keeping the talk accessible to the students in attendance.
Accompanying Ron from SUNY Binghamton were a number of graduate students along with Professor Luise-Charlotte Kappe . After Ron's talk, our undergraduates had the opportunity to discuss with the visitors the graduate program in Mathematics at SUNY Binghamton.
Following the talk Ithaca College Professor John Maceli accompanied our Binghamton and Cornell guests to dinner at the Moosewood restaurant in downtown Ithaca. During dinner we discussed several topics related to the teaching of mathematics at the college level, including calculus reform , and the incorporation of mathematical modeling into the undergraduate curriculum.
Overall, both students and faculty agreed that the day was a
great success.