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Joel Feinstein's Home Page

RESEARCH

My interests are in Functional Analysis, especially commutative, semisimple Banach algebras. In particular I work on regularity conditions, rational and polynomial approximation, and the classification of the endomorphisms, homomorphisms and derivations of certain classes of Banach algebras.

Many of the projects available for research students are listed on our Algebra and Analysis research group projects page.

I often use (mathematical) Swiss cheeses in my work.

A Swiss cheese! Click on the image to see a full size version.

Swiss cheese

And here is a picture of me with a very appropriate sculpture next to the Science library of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, during my sabbatical visit there, January to July 1999.

Click on the image to see a full size version.

Brown University sculpture

I also made a poster about Swiss cheeses back in the 90s.

Click on the picture below to see a full size poster. (I must make a new version sometime!)

Swiss Cheeses poster

ADMINISTRATION

Currently I am the School's Outreach Officer, with responsibility for the School Open Days, Summer Schools, and other outreach activities.

Prospective applicants to maths courses at the University of Nottingham should visit the page
      https://tinyurl.com/mathscourseuon

I am also currently the School's Teaching Support Officer, supporting our first-year Core modules.

TEACHING

During my lecturing career I have given a wide range of lecture courses/modules at both undergraduate and masters level.

I have taught honours mathematics modules and service teaching modules to students from many disciplines, including Foundation Year Engineering students.

The subjects I have taught include introductory pure mathematics, calculus, analysis (real, complex and functional analysis), linear algebra, numerical analysis and graph theory.

I have supervised many summer undergraduate research internships and BSc/MSc/MMath projects. Eight of these project students (so far) have gone on to become my own (PhD) research students.

In December 2008 I started a new blog on Explaining mathematics (How to explain mathematical concepts in a way that students can understand). As well as discussion of my recent experiences, ideas, and teaching methodology, my blog includes links to a number of my teaching resources, and, in particular, to videos of many of my classes.

I try to keep my latest teaching timetable updated at https://tinyurl.com/jffttnow

Hobbies

Othello

I am a former British champion of the boardgame Othello. (I won the title six times between 1989 and 1997.) Back in 1993 I wrote a program to solve the 6x6 version of Othello. I wrote this up, for fun, in the form of a report on a (fictional) World 6x6 Othello Championships in the July 1993 newsletter of the British Othello Federation

Here is a poster, dating from the 90s, with some information about Othello.

Note that computers were much slower back in 1993, and also we no longer install Thor as standard on the School's PCs.

Click on the image to see the full size version!

Othello poster

Click on the image to see a full size version!.

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Page maintained by Joel Feinstein, Joel.Feinstein@nottingham.ac.uk, http://explainingmaths.wordpress.com