Garrett Ervin

Harry Bateman Postdoctoral Scholar
Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy
California Institute of Technology
Kellogg Laboratory 204
gervin [at] caltech [dot] edu

About

I am a postdoc in mathematics at Caltech. My research interests are in set theory, order theory, and combinatorics. Much of my work concerns the structural arithmetic of linear orders. My postdoc adviser at Caltech is Alekos Kechris; I was previously a postdoc in the math department at Carnegie Mellon under Clinton Conley. Before that, I was at UC Irvine, doing my Ph.D. under Martin Zeman. You can find my CV here.

During the fall quarter of 2024, I am teaching Ma / CS 117a: Computability Theory. In the past, I've taught upper division courses in logic, set theory, model theory, and computability theory, and introductory courses on proofs and proof writing, linear algebra, and calculus. I authored the complete course content for a course on set theory and forcing in the spring of 2024 (at Caltech), as well as a topics course Linear Orders in the fall of 2022 (at Caltech), and a new course Linear Algebra for Data Science in the fall of 2021 (at CMU).

I grew up in San Diego, and went to college at Caltech. My mathematical heroes include Sierpinski and Lindenbaum. My favorite theorem is Cantor's characterization of the rational line, and my favorite proof is that of the Cantor-Schroeder-Bernstein-Dedekind-Zermelo-Korselt-... Theorem. I'm also a big fan of Emerson, sports analytics, impressions of flowers, John Robie the Cat, and Orson, my cat. I recently ran my first half-marathon (in 1:34:59).