Mark V. Sapir


IMAGE: It's me.


Here are the countries I have visited so far:


visited 38 states (16.8%).

 To see photos of my family and pictures made during my trips, click here.

My wife's web page is here, my older daughter's web page is here and my son's web page is here

Here is how I looked like in 1980-1981 (I was a graduate student then).

Red Square ParadeRed Square ParadeRed Square ParadeRed Square ParadeRed Square ParadeRed Square ParadeRed Square Parade

Red Square ParadeRed Square ParadeRed Square ParadeRed Square ParadeRed Square ParadeRed Square ParadeRed Square Parade

Mark V. Sapir
Centennial Professor
1522 Stevenson Center
Department of Mathematics
Vanderbilt University
(615) 322-6657 (office)
(615) 343-0215 (fax)
e-mail:m.sapir(AT)vanderbilt.edu

Seminar "Group theory and topology"


To look at this semester schedule, click here

Graduate students:

  • My PhD student Iva Špakulová (Kozáková) defended her PhD in December, 2008. She is working on percolation in Cayley graphs of groups, and other probabilistic aspects of group theory. Thesis: "Percolation and Ising model on tree-like graphs".
  • I was also a PhD advisor (together with John Meakin) of Tatyana Jajcayova. Thesis: "HNN extensions of inverse semigroups".

    • Teaching:


    In the Spring of 2010, I am teaching Graduate Algebra (Math 283b).

    Words of encouragement

    I often hear complains that I don't encourage my students enough. I am told that students work very hard and need to feel good about themselves. And I make them feel good very rarely. So I decided to make a special "feel good about yourself" page for my students. Click and hear (perhaps the first time) words of encouragement coming from your Professor.

    Another alcohol-free way to make you feel good

    If after hours of doing a homework you feel like you can't solve anything anymore, try this "Find the fish" problem by Dr. Dewynne, a Maths professor from Great Britain.

    The WebTester

    The WebTester is an engine for administering non-multiple choice tests over the Web. Linear Algebra tests which I have been using in my Linear Algebra classes are available here.

    Linear Algebra WebNotes

    Click here to see the WebBook on Linear Algebra that I wrote in 1996-1997. It contains complete set of my lectures, an on-line calculator, homework assignments with solutions, discussion pages, etc.

    Research Interests

    I am interested in algorithmic, geometric and probabilistic invariants of groups, semigroups and algebras. Click here to see some of my publications and my CV. Here are my papers in the arXiv.

    Slides of talks

  • "Higman Embeddings", International Conference on Algebras and Lattices, Prague, June 24, 2010.
  • "Geometry of groups and computational complexity", 75 KAM Colloquium, Prague, June 17, 2010.
  • "Conjugacy growth of groups", Starkville, MS, March 20, 2010.
  • "Polynomial maps over fields and residually finite groups", Lecture 4. Bath, UK, August 2009.
  • "Polynomial maps over fields and residually finite groups", Lecture 3. Bath, UK, August 2009.
  • "Polynomial maps over fields and residually finite groups", Lecture 2. Bath, UK, August 2009.
  • "Polynomial maps over fields and residually finite groups", Lecture 1. Bath, UK, August 2009.
  • "Polynomial maps over fields and residually finite groups", Banff (Canada), October 14, 2008, AMS sectional meeting, Huntsville, AL, October, 24, 2008.
  • "Percolation on transitive graphs", Ottawa (Canada), December 14, 2007.
  • "Hilbert space compression of R.Thompson group and wreath products", Lausanne (Switzerland), January 25, 2007.
  • "Hilbert space compression of groups", New Orleans (LA, USA), January 5, 2007.
  • "Cut-points in asymptotic cones", Manresa, (Spain), September, 2006.
  • "Asymptotic and algorithmic invariants", ICM-2006 (August, 2006)
  • "Groups acting on tree-graded spaces", Oberwolfach (May, 2006)
  • "Groups acting on tree-graded spaces", Toronto (May, 2006)
  • "Tree-graded spaces and asymptotic cones", Shanks-2006, Nashville (May 2006)
  • "Residually finite groups and dynamics of polynomial maps", Tel Aviv (January, 2006)

    Roo and Robby

    When I was in Russia, I wrote a textbook "Informatics" together with Gejn, Linetsky and Sholokhovich. This is the most popular textbook on this subject in Russia now. There were 5 editions, total number of copies is more than 2,500,000. I also was the author of the software support of this textbook. This software was written for some primitive Z-80 computers made by Yamaha. An adaptation of this software to IBM PC was made by Linetsky and myself. The software is called Roo and Robby/SchoolWorks and consists of 5 programs. Roo and Robby are machines which understand simple languages (Roo is a kangaroo and Robby is a snake); the SchoolWorks contains a spreadsheet, a database and a text processor. There was a nice review article about Roo and Robby in the November issue, 1990 of PC/Computing, and in Visions (Spring/Summer 1993). If you want to download Roo, click here . If your computer is running Windows XP or later versions of Windows, you will need to install the Dosbox first and run the software under Dosbox (i.e. first start Dosbox, then in the Dosbox window mount the directory of R&R, change to that directory and then start r&r, the batch file. The Dosbox can be downloaded for free here.
    In 1992-1994 we together with Linetsky had programming classes in Lincoln (NE) for kids 4-7 grades where we tought them Roo and Robby.

    All comments mail to: m.sapir(AT)vanderbilt.edu This is your local time

    • Counters
    Discount Flower Delivery
    free counters