Workshop on the Geometry of Circle Packings

The focal point of circle packing theory is the Koebe-Andre'ev-Thurston Theorem that gives conditions that guarantee the existence and rigidity of circle packings on closed surfaces in the pattern of a given triangulation of the surface. The theorem was discovered by Bill Thurston in the late seventies and represents a rediscovery and broad generalization of a theorem of Paul Koebe from 1936, and has an interpretation that recovers a characterization of certain three-dimensional hyperbolic polyhedra due to Andre'ev from 1971. Since Thurston'e 1985 Purdue talk that showed how to use the theorem to build a scheme for approximating the Riemann mapping of a simply connected proper domain in the plane to the unit disk, the theory of circle packing has enjoyed enormous development and has found both theoretical and practical applications in a wide variety of venues. This workshop will bring together experts from a wide variety of backgrounds who have an interest in packings.