Daniel Alvarez-Gavela

I was born in Switzerland but grew up in Madrid, Spain. As the child of physicists, mathematics was always present in my childhood, but I had other passions such as art and music, and for a while I wanted to study fine art, or be a comic book artist. I would go on to study pure math while nurturing artistic interest separately, but ended up finding an avenue for comic book style drawing in the illustrations I now draw during talks. Even the narrative style is similar! (with various vignettes for the different time slices of the argument). The kind of mathematics that I enjoy always has some "pretty picture" in the background, even if sometimes it is not possible to accurately illustrate the picture in the limited dimensions of our universe. I think math has the best pictures! More generally, I fundamentally think of pure mathematics as an art form, and I enjoy thinking about ways to infuse our mathematical aesthetic into more physical forms of art such as large sculptures. I also enjoy other artistic aspects of the profession such as the performance art element of giving a talk, where many theatre and improv principles apply. I still play music, from old time banjo clawhammer to electronic music production, and greatly enjoy adventures in nature as well as traveling. I have devoted a significant amount of time to political action, in particular during my undergrad years in Madrid when the "indignados" protests were going on, but also later on at Stanford, and look forward to finding ways to get involved with local politics in the Boston area.