MRC Public Lecture: Tadashi Tokieda

Other 12.11.2026 / Thursday / 19:30 - 21:00 GSB Knight - Arbuckle / Cemex, 641 Knight Way, Stanford, CA 94305 Organizer: Department of Mathematics Get tickets
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The Stanford Mathematics Research Center presents Surprises from rubbing the wrong way, a lecture given by Tadashi Tokieda, Professor of Mathematics at Stanford University, as part of the MRC Public Lecture series.

Friction, stickiness, jamming . . . Don’t we frown on these conditions as spoilers of life? This lecture, however, will perform baffling experiments that pop out of these conditions, and probe their subtle physics via simple mathematics. You’ll be able to enjoy many of the experiments with friends and family as easy magic.

Tadashi Tokieda is starting his 10th year as a member of the Stanford math department, after vagabonding across careers — painter, philologist, precarious plumber, physicist. He likes to collect counter‑intuitive phenomena which he discovers, designs, or learns about from others, and to share them in outreach, e.g. via the YouTube channel Numberphile. T^2 spoke in that capacity at the quadrennial International Congress of Mathematicians 2018, 2022, 2026.

This lecture is free and open to the public.

See the full event poster here.

You can find more information about speaker Tadashi Tokieda on the Stanford Math Department website.