Abstract

J.C.Maxwell posed the following problem in his book “Treatise of electricity and magnetism”. Given N fixed point charges in R^3, find or give an upper bound on the number of equilibrium points of their electrostatic field. He claimed that this number (if points of equilibrium are isolated) is at most (N-1)^2. Unfortunately, the argument in the book is incomplete and his claim still remains open even for the case of 3 charges. Around 2010 we (re)discovered this problem and were able to prove the existence of an upper bound which is much worse than the one suggested by Maxwell. In my talk I will survey the problem and some recent progress in the area.

Time

2023-11-30  15:00 - 16:00   

Speaker

Boris Shapiro, Stockholm University

Room

Room 308