Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 18:19:18 -0500
From: Douglas Rogers <drogers@gauss.math.usf.edu>
Subject: Distributing points on the sphere
To: cipra@stolaf.edu
Cc: esaff@math.usf.edu, k.tognetti@uow.edu.au, rusin@math.niu.edu,
        zhou@math.usf.edu

Barry Cipra,
305, Oxford Street,
Northfield, MN 55057.

   Hardly a week passes without someone somewhere wondering how to
distribute points "evenly" on a sphere.

   When I was in Australia last year, Keith Tognetti
<k.tognetti@uow.edu.au>, of the University of Wollongong, asked a
problem of this sort for the disk.

   When I arrived here in Tampa, I discovered that a group under
Ed. Saff <esaff@math.usf.edu> had made substantial computational
inroads into variants of the problem for the sphere, examining
various different "energies" which might be associated with such
distributions.

   David Rusin <rusin@math.niu.edu>, of Northern Illinois University,
has also made a compilation of material on the subject.

   It is a natural topic for one of your articles in SIAM News (or
What is Happening in the Mathematical Sciences). The pictures
computed by Zhou Yangmu <zhou@math.usf.edu> would particularly lend
themself to such an exposition.

   I am sure that Ed. Saff would be delighted to assist you, in
the context of the constructive approximation group here.

   DGR.