Mathematics

Random matrices have a variety of applications in many areas of math and science. I will introduce and motivate random matrices through the lens of population dynamics and briefly discuss other applications. The goal of the talk is to give a description of some cornerstone results from random matrices such as the probability distribution of the eigenvalues of a large random matrix, i.e. the Wigner semicircle law, and the probability distribution of the largest eigenvalue of a large random matrix, i.e. the Tracy-Widom distribution. This talk is aimed at a general audience with no background required.