Past Seminars › Seminar Series

Colloquia (past)

Fri, 21/10/2005
16:30 		Pierre Cartier (Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques) Colloquia Add to calendar L2
EXOTIC SYMMETRIES : NEW VIEWS ABOUT SPACE
The recent developments of Mathematical Physics have brought very new ideas about the nature of space . I will argue that we have to mix the methods of noncommutative geometry of Alain Connes with the prophetic views of Grothendieck about the so-called motives and their motivic Galois group .
The dream of a "cosmic Galois group" may soon become an established reality .
 
Fri, 10/06/2005
16:30 		Isadore Singer (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Colloquia Add to calendar L2
The projective Dirac operator and its Fractional Analytic Index
I will give an expository account of Mathai, Melrose, and Singer [math.DG/0402329], explaining how to define the projective Dirac "operator" when the underlying manifold is neither spin nor spin_C, and how to define its analytic index which need not be an integer. Nevertheless, the usual index formulas apply. Professor Singer will be admitted as honorary member of the London Mathematical Society just before his talk.
Fri, 29/04/2005
16:30 		Mr Ranga Yogeshwar (WDR German TV - Germany) Colloquia Add to calendar L2
Mathematics + media = mathemagics
Most people acquire their
Fri, 04/03/2005
16:30 		Professor Caroline Series (Warwick University) Colloquia Add to calendar L2
Classifying and locating Kleinian groups.
Fri, 28/01/2005
16:30 		Professor Andrei Okounkov (Princeton University) Colloquia Add to calendar L2
Algebraic Geometry of Random Surfaces
Fri, 26/11/2004
16:30 		Professor John H Conway (Princeton University) Colloquia Add to calendar L2
Free Will, Quantum Logic, and the Kochen-Specker Paradox
Fri, 22/10/2004
16:30 		Professor Peter Lax (Courant Institute) Colloquia Add to calendar L2
Degenerate matrices, a mixture of PDE, algebra and topology
Fri, 28/05/2004
16:30 		Nigel Hitchin (Oxford) Colloquia Add to calendar L2
Einstein's legacy in geometry
Einstein bequeathed many things to differential geometry — a global viewpoint and the urge to find new structures beyond Riemannian geometry in particular. Nevertheless, his gravitational equations and the role of the Ricci tensor remain the ones most closely associated with his name and the subject of much current research. In the Riemannian context they make contact in specific instances with a wide range of mathematics both analytical and geometrical. The talk will attempt to show how diverse parts of mathematics, past and present, have contributed to solving the Einstein equations.
Fri, 21/05/2004
16:30 		Terence Tao (London Mathematical Hardy Lecturer) Colloquia Add to calendar L2
Nonlinear Fourier transform
Fri, 30/01/2004
16:30 		Doug Arnold Colloquia Add to calendar L2
Stable and Unstable Discretization of Partial Differential Equations
Stability is central to the study of numerical algorithms for solving partial differential equations. But stability can be subtle and elusive. In fact, for a number of important classes of PDE problems, no one has yet succeeded in devising stable numerical methods. In developing our understanding of stability and instability, a wide range of mathematical ideas--with origins as diverse as functional analysis,differential geometry, and algebraic topology--have been enlisted and developed. The talk will explore the concept of stability of discretizations to PDE, its significance, and recent advances in its understanding.
Fri, 28/11/2003
16:30 		Peter Littlemann (Bergische Universitat Wuppertal) Colloquia Add to calendar L2
Representation theory and combinatorics, from Young tableaux to the loop Grassmannian
A little more than 100 years ago, Issai Schur published his pioneering PhD thesis on the representations of the group of invertible complex n x n - matrices. At the same time, Alfred Young introduced what later came to be known as the Young tableau. The tableaux turned out to be an extremely useful combinatorial tool (not only in representation theory). This talk will explore a few of these appearances of the ubiquitous Young tableaux and also discuss some more recent generalizations of the tableaux and the connection with the geometry of the loop grassmannian.
Fri, 24/10/2003
16:30 		Keith Moffatt (UK) Colloquia Add to calendar L2
The paradoxical behaviour of rolling bodies
Why does a spinning coin come to such a sudden stop? Why does a spinning hard-boiled egg stand up on its end? And why does the rattleback rotate happily in one direction but not in the other? The key mathematical aspects of these familiar dynamical phenomena, which admit simple table-top demonstration, will be revealed.

For any corrections/updates to these listings, please contact seminars [-at-] maths [dot] ox [dot] ac [dot] uk.

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