MA30231: Projective Geometry

Welcome

This is the home page of MA30231: Projective Geometry taught by Fran Burstall.

The story so far

I keep a diary of what I covered in lectures. There is also an official syllabus and a reading list.

Here is the timetable.

Exercise sheets

Exercise sheets are issued weekly at the problem class and discussed at the next problem class after which solutions will appear here.

I will mark whatever you hand in, no matter when you hand it in, and normally get your work back to you within a week.

• Exercise sheet 1 with solutions as PDF.
• Exercise sheet 2 with solutions as PDF.
• Exercise sheet 3 with solutions as PDF.
• Exercise sheet 4 with solutions as PDF.
• Exercise sheet 5 with solutions as PDF.
• Exercise sheet 6 with solutions as PDF.
• Exercise sheet 7 with solutions as PDF.
• Exercise sheet 8 with solutions as PDF.
• Exercise sheet 9 with solutions as PDF.
• Exercise sheet 10 with solutions as PDF.

Demos and handouts

• Desargues' Theorem.
• Pappus' Theorem.
• A pencil of conics.

Lecture notes

By public demand and with some misgivings, I am making my lecture notes available in pdf format. This will happen sometime after the lectures have taken place.

WARNING: these are not a substitute for taking your own careful notes during lectures. In particular, there are probably many mistakes in my notes.

• Week 1
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4
• Week 5
• Week 6
• Week 7
• Week 8
• Week 9
• Week 10
• Week 11
• Revision lecture

Assessment

This unit is assessed 100% by exam. Generic exam feedback will be available early in the summer.

Here are the past examination papers as well as a mock exam from 2011. Solutions to the exams are available online and in the Academic Reserve Collection of the Library.

• The 2011 mock exam as PDF with solutions.
• The 2011 exam as PDF.
• The 2012 exam as PDF.

Other cool things to look at

• A mathematics newsletter from Hong Kong with some nice geometry problems. (Found by Gemma Down.)

Hall of Fame

Here are potted biographies of some of the heroes that built Projective Geometry:

Girard Desargues 1591–1661

The founder of Projective Geometry.

Pappus of Alexandria c. 290–c. 350

He proved the first theorem of Projective Geometry.

Jean-Victor Poncelet 1788–1867

The inventor of the Principle of Duality and the first to have the good idea of doing geometry over the complex numbers.

Herman Grassmann 1809–1877

The inventor of exterior algebra.

Julius Plücker 1801–1868

The first geometer to use homogeneous coordinates.

Felix Klein 1849–1925

An enormously influential geometer who emphasised the role of symmetry in geometry. Father of the Klein correspondence and much more.

There are many more biographies at the St Andrews history site.

Feedback

I welcome feedback in the form of constructive comments or criticism.

Problems with this site?

If you encounter any problems while using this site, send me mail describing as completely as you can what has gone wrong.