Usefulness and Elegance in Mathematics – Prof. Meraiah Martinez

The Thomistic Institute

Prof. Meraiah Martinez explores the beauty and usefulness of mathematics, emphasizing the delight mathematicians find in elegant proofs, structured abstractions, and the interplay between pure and applied mathematics across various fields.

This lecture was given on July 18th, 2025, at Dominican House of Studies.

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About the Speakers:

Meraiah Martinez grew up moving between California and Colorado and graduated from BC in 2019. She received her M.S. (2021) and Ph.D. (2023) in mathematics from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Meraiah’s primary research area is coding theory, although she greatly enjoys combinatorics, cryptography, and graph theory, as well. In her free time, she enjoys reading and making a variety of things from yarn.

Keywords: Algebra, Applied Mathematics, Coding Theory, Differential Equations, Euler’s Equation, Four Color Theorem, Pure Mathematics, Quadratic Formula, Susceptible Infectious Recovered Model, Topology