The leap from chaos theory to computer animation will be explored in an entertaining lecture by one of the nation’s top mathematicians at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 4, at UNC Asheville’s Humanities Lecture Hall.

Robert L. Devaney, a Boston University mathematics professor and one of the world’s experts on chaos, generated the mathematical definition of chaos that is the basis of current research in the field. His talk, “The Chaos Game and Fractal Images,” is free and open to the public.

“Cream in coffee, weather patterns, the current in a stream, and sometimes even traffic flow are examples of chaotic systems,” says UNCA mathematics professor Samuel Kaplan, who invited Devaney to speak. “Chaotic systems have a rule, like how cream swirls in a coffee cup, but the system is so complicated you can’t make any long-term predictions about where a particular molecule will be in the cup in five minutes. Mathematicians seek to describe and identify chaotic systems and find their underlying rules.”

But when mathematicians try to describe the geometry of chaos, they don’t end up with lines and circles, they end up with fractals.

Devaney’s lecture is the first annual Parsons Lecture, in honor of Professor Emeritus Joseph Parsons. Once the sole mathematics professor at UNCA’s predecessor institution, Asheville-Biltmore College, Parsons was among the handful of early faculty and administrators who set the institution on the path to become the state’s designated liberal arts university.

For more information about Devaney’s talk, call Samuel Kaplan, UNCA Mathematics Department, at 828.232.5192 or e-mail: skaplan@unca.edu.