Hello there!

I'm Steve Trettel, a mathematician who is also interested in computers, physics, and language.

Bio GitHub Twitter

I'm currently an assistant professor at the University of San Francisco. This is both my personal and academic website, so you’ll find math I like explaining, updates on my computer graphics hobby, physics I'm learning, and some favorite meals, among other things.

Note: This website is a new redesign (as of summer 2022) for me, and my first attempt at learning hugo for site building: it’s definitely still under construction so apologies in advance for broken links or non-existent pages!

Illustration

All Art

Code

Hyp Balloons
FrenetField
Geodesic Ripples
Equirectangular Map
Stereographic Map
Hemisphere Map
Archimedes Map
Mercator
Five Body
Geodesic Circles

All Code

Notes

Fermi & Bose:
Why are all particles *either* fermions *or* bosons?

Linking Number:
Gauss' linking number of closed curves and algebraic topology.

Winding Number:
Understanding the Algebraic Topology underlying the winding number of a closed curve in the plane.

Hyperbolic Springs:
Deriving the ODE for a spring which is pushed in hyperbolic geometry (it oscillates!)

Convolution and Differentiation of Distributions:
If F is a distribution and g is a function, why is (DF)*g equal to F*Dg?

Topologizing The Space Of Distributions:
Why do we need to require convergence of the derivatives when defining a topology on the set of distributions?

Deep Time:
Some thoughts on the importance of appreciating the immensity of earth's history.

Life in Hyperbolic Space:
The dangers of life in a negatively curved space

Cassini:
Saying goodbye to my favorite space craft, on the eve of its entry into Saturn's atmosphere.

Cubics and Braids:
The bridge between the 3-strand braid group and the trefoil knot complement

All Notes

Classes

All Classes

Talks

All Talks

...

Papers

All Papers

Recipes

All Recipes