John Urschel, a doctoral candidate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an offensive lineman with the Baltimore Ravens, will deliver a lecture at the University of Delaware from 10:30-11:30 a.m., Friday, March 10, in 111 Memorial Hall.

His talk, “Trace Theorems and Drawings of Planar Graphs,” is part of the UD Department of Mathematical Sciences’ seminar series in discrete mathematics.

Urschel, who earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Penn State, is pursuing a doctorate in applied mathematics at MIT. He gives this description of his UD lecture:

“The trace operator is a crucial component of the theory of boundary value problems in partial differential equations. We prove variants of the theorems on continuity and existence of right inverse of the trace operator for discrete graphs and without any underlying geometry. We use such results to motivate a new algorithm for finding pictorial representations of planar graphs.”

Urschel, who played football at Penn State, became interested in research mathematics as a sophomore, when his calculus instructor noticed his talent for the field and encouraged him to pursue additional reading.

He was drafted by the Ravens in the fifth round of the 2014 NFL Draft and has garnered national attention for his unusual combination of abilities and passions. He told an interviewer for the American Mathematical Society (AMS) journal last year that he’s able to focus exclusively on whichever role he’s pursuing at a given time.

“If I’m thinking about math on the football field, this is going to get me killed,” Urschel said in the AMS profile. “So that [focus on football] is just survival instinct.

“And when I’m doing math, it’s all encompassing and I’m 100 percent in it, and there’s really nothing else to think about. … I love mathematics, I love the elegance, I love the challenge, and so that’s been natural for me.”