Current Developments in Mathematics Conference

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

The departments of Harvard and MIT will sponsor an international conference at Harvard for one and a half days. The purpose is to bring excellent speakers to explain the forefront of different fields in mathematical science, which will promote interdisciplinary activities among mathematicians of different fields. This has been an annual event. This year, the following will be speakers: Ken Ribet, who will talk on the works of Chandrashekhar Khare and Jean-Pierre Wintenberger, on the proof of Serre conjecture (1987) in many cases. Serre conjectured that odd irreducible two-dimensional mod p-Galois representations should arise from modular forms. Yakov Sinai will talk on mathematical problems in fluid dynamics, where he will describe the construction of power series solution to the Navier-Stokes equation. Ed Witten will talk on the recent important development of how the Langlands program appears in quantum field theory and how mathematical ideas can come from such interpretations. Terry Tao will talk on his work on harmonic analysis and nonlinear hyperbolic equations. Simon Donaldson or Paul Seidel will talk on recent advances in symplectic geometry. An important component of the conference is to help young post-doctoral fellows and graduate students to come from all over the country and other parts of the world to learn, to communicate and to work with the leaders of the field that attend this conference. Their travel will be covered depending on the extent of the availability of the fund. Minorities are especially encouraged to come. Since the topics cover a wide range from number theory, geometry, topology, algebra, mathematical physics to computing and applied mathematics in general, we expect a great deal of interchange of ideas during the conference. A rather detailed preliminary book will be printed to help the audience understand the lectures. At the end, a book written by the speakers will be published.