This Minority Research Initiation award supports the research in algebraic geometry of Professor Ronald Biggers of Clark College. Dr. Biggers's project is to make a computer-aided attack on a number of basic problems in the theory of moduli of algebraic curves. The results that he aims for are of consider- able interest and importance in themselves, but a byproduct of his work will be a package of routines for computing in group theory that will be of use to other mathematicians as well. This is research in the field of algebraic geometry, one of the oldest parts of modern mathematics, but one that has had a revolutionary flowering in the past quarter-century. In its origin, it treated figures that could be defined in the plane by the simplest equations, namely polynomials. Nowadays the field makes use of methods not only from algebra, but from analysis and topology, and conversely is finding application in those fields as well as in theoretical computer science and in robotics.
