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Moursund Lectures

2023

Dr. Soren Galatius

Department of Mathematical Sciences KU

  • Lecture 1: Topological Pontryagin Classes
    • March 7th at 4:00 PM
  • Lecture 2: Cohomology of Moduli Spaces of Graphs and Surfaces
    • March 8th at 4:00 PM
  • Lecture 3: On the Homology of General Linear Groups of Infinite Fields
    • March 10th at 4:00 PM


2020

Ulrike Tillmann

University of Oxford

Dates and topic TBA


8-10 April 2019

Amie Wilkinson

University of Chicago

Professor Wilkinson will present three lectures:

    • Lecture 1 : The general case

      4pm, Monday, April 8, 2019, Deady Hall 208

 

    • Lecture 2 : Robust mechanisms for chaos, I: Geometry and the birth of stable ergodicity

      4pm, Tuesday, April 9, 2019, Deady Hall 208

 

  • Lecture 3 : Robust mechanisms for chaos, II: Stable ergodicity and partial hyperbolicity

    4pm, Wednesday, April 10, 2019, Gerlinger Hall 242

There will be a reception at 5pm on Monday in the Fenton Lounge, room 219. All three lectures will be preceded by Tea in the Fenton Lounge at 3:30pm.


3-5 April 2018

Dusa McDuff

Columbia University

Professor McDuff will present three lectures:
Embedding questions in symplectic Topology

    • Lecture 1 : Introduction to Symplectic Topology
      4pm, Tuesday, April 3, 2018, Deady Hall 208

 

    • Lecture 2 : Embeddings of 4-dimensional ellipsoids
      4pm, Wednesday, April 4, 2018, McKenzie Hall 229

 

  • Lecture 3 : Beyond 4-dimensions
    4pm, Thursday, April 5, 2018, Deady Hall 208

16-18 May 2017

Mikhail Khovanov

Columbia University

Professor Khovanov will present three lectures:

    • Lecture 1: The Jones polynomial of links and tangles and its categorification
      4pm, Tuesday, May 16, 2017, Pacific Hall 123

 

    • Lecture 2: Categorification of the Kuperberg bracket
      4pm, Wednesday, May 17, 2017, Willamette Hall 100

 

  • Lecture 3: How to categorify the ring of integers localized at two
    4pm, Thursday, May 18, 2017, NEW LOCATION: McKenzie Hall 125

 


17-19 May 2016

Peter Ozsváth

Princeton University

Professor Ozsváth will give three lectures on the general theme of

Floer homology and 3-manifolds

  • Lecture 1: Holomorphic disks and low-dimensional topology

    4pm, Tuesday, 17 May 2016, 145 Straub Hall

  • Lecture 2: A knot invariant from grid diagrams

    4pm, Wednesday, 18 May 2016, 110 Fenton Hall

  • Lecture 3: Bordered Floer homology

    4pm, Thursday, 19 May 2016, 145 Straub Hall

11-13 May 2015

Gang Tian

Beijing University and Princeton University

Professor Tian will give three lectures on the general theme of

Curvature Flows

  • Lecture 1: Curvature Flows
    4pm, Monday, 11 May 2015, 229 McKenzie
  • Lecture 2: Analytic Minimal Model Program through Ricci Flow
    4pm, Tuesday, 12 May 2015, 229 McKenzie
  • Lecture 3: New Curvature Flows
    4pm, Wednesday, 13 May 2015, 229 Willamette

All three lectures will be preceded by Tea in Fenton 219 at 3:15pm.

5-7 May 2014

Jacob Lurie

Harvard

Professor Lurie will give three lectures over the course of his week in Eugene (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday) on the general theme of

Theory of “Spectral” Algebraic Geometry.

All three lectures will be preceded by Tea in Fenton 219 at 3:15pm. Here is the poster including a detailed abstract of the talks.

21-23 May 2013

Raphael Rouquier

UCLA

Professor Rouquier will give three lectures over the course of his week in Eugene (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) on the general theme of

Higher Representation Theory.

  • Lecture 1: Quiver Hecke algebras
    4pm, Tuesday, 21 May 2013, 240C McKenzie
  • Lecture 2: Representations and geometry
    4pm, Wednesday, 22 May 2013, 240C McKenzie
  • Lecture 3: Topology in dimensions 3 and 4
    4pm, Thursday, 23 May 2013, 240A McKenzie

All three lectures will be preceded by Tea in Fenton 319 at 3:15pm. Here is the poster including detailed abstracts of each talk.

21-25 May 2012

Andrei Okounkov

Columbia University

Professor Okounkov will give three lectures over the course of his week in Eugene.

Quantum Groups and Quantum Cohomology.

Quantum cohomology is a deformation of the classical cohomology algebra of an algebraic variety X that takes into account enumerative geometry of rational curves in X. A great deal is know about its structure for special X. For example, Givental and Kim described the quantum cohomology of flag manifolds in terms of certain quantum integrable systems, namely Toda lattices. A general vision for a connection between quantum cohomology and quantum integrable systems recently emerged in supersymmetric gauge theories, in particular in the work of Nekrasov and Shatashvili. Mathematically, the relevant class of varieties X to consider appears to be the so-called equivariant symplectic resolutions. These include, for example, cotangent bundles to compact homogeneous varieties, as well as Hilbert schemes of points and more general instanton moduli spaces. In my lectures, which will be based on joint work with Davesh Maulik, I will construct certain solutions of the Yang-Baxter equation associated to symplectic resolutions as above. The associated quantum integrable system will be identified with the quantum cohomology of X. If time permits, we will also explore K-theoretic generalization of this theory.

20-22 April 2010

Anatoly Libgober

University of Illinois at Chicago

Professor Libgober will present three lectures on the following topics:

  • Lecture 1: Topology of quasi-projective varieties. Abstract.
    4pm, Tuesday, 20 April 2010, 100 Willamette
  • Lecture 2: Lefschetz methods in topology of algebraic varieties and theory of Alexander invariants. Abstract.
    4pm, Wednesday, 21 April 2010, 125 McKenzie
  • Lecture 3: Hodge theoretical methods for the study of Alexander invariants. Abstract.
    4pm, Thursday, 22 April 2010, 282 Lillis

 

10-12 November 2009

Terence Tao

University of California, Los Angeles

Professor Tao will present three lectures on the following topics:

  • Lecture 1: Recent Progress in Additive Prime Number Theory. Abstract.
    4pm, Tuesday, 10 November 2009, 129 McKenzie
  • Lecture 2: Compressed Sensing. Abstract.
    4pm, Wednesday, 11 November 2009, 221 McKenzie
  • Lecture 3: Discrete Random Matrices. Abstract.
    4pm, Thursday, 12 November 2009, 221 McKenzie

Recordings of the lectures (audio and video) are available here. The audio is good (Tao was wearing a microphone). One can’t see Tao very well, but one can see the slides for the presentation.

7-9 May 2008

William Fulton

University of Michigan

Professor Fulton will present three lectures on “Equivariant cohomology of homogeneous varieties”:

  • Lecture 1: 4pm, Wednesday, 7 May 2008, 115 Lawrence.
  • Lecture 2: 4pm, Thursday, 8 May 2008, 115 Lawrence.
  • Lecture 3: 4pm, Friday, 9 May 2008, 115 Lawrence.

The abstract is on the poster.

23-25 May 2007

Gerhard Huisken

Max Planck Institute of Gravitational Physics

Professor Huisken will present three lectures on the following topics:

  • Lecture 1: The heat equation and uniformisation in geometry.
    4pm, Wednesday, 23 May 2007, 221 McKenzie
  • Lecture 2: Isoperimetric inequalities and the concept of mass in General Relativity.
    4pm, Thursday, 24 May 2007, 204 Villard
  • Lecture 3: Isoperimetric inequalities via geometric evolution equations.
    4pm, Friday, 25 May 2007, 205 Deady

Click here for the abstracts (pdf).

15-17 March 2006

Victor Ginzburg

University of Chicago

Professor Ginzburg will present three lectures on “Noncommutative geometry and quiver algebras”:

  • Lecture 1: Symplectic resolutions, their deformations and quantizations.
    4pm, Wednesday, 15 March 2006, 106 Deady
  • Lecture 2: Noncommutative symplectic geometry, quivers, and matrix integrals.
    4pm, Thursday, 16 March 2006, 106 Deady
  • Lecture 3: Calabi-Yau algebras.
    4pm, Friday, 17 March 2006, 110 Willamette

The abstract is on the poster.

25-27 April 2005

Richard Schoen

Stanford University

Professor Schoen will present three lectures:

  • Lecture 1: The Yamabe problem revisited
    4:00 p.m., Monday, 25 April 2005, 106 Deady Hall
  • Lecture 2: Global compactness theorems for constant scalar curvature metrics
    4:00 p.m., Tuesday, 26 April 2005, 106 Deady Hall
  • Lecture 3: Sharp isoperimetric inequalities for minimal surfaces in Euclidean space
    4:00 p.m., Wednesday, 27 April 2005, 110 Willamette Hall

The abstracts are on the poster.

12-16 April 2004

Maxim Kontsevich

IHES, Bures-sur-Yvette, France

Professor Kontsevich will present three lectures on Integral Affine Structures:

  • Lecture 1: Definitions and basic examples
    4:00 p.m., Monday, 12 April 2004, 100 Willamette Hall
  • Lecture 2: Non-Archimedean and tropical viewpoints
    4:00 p.m., Wednesday, 14 April 2004, 100 Willamette Hall
  • Lecture 3: Collapsing in mirror symmetry
    4:00 p.m., Friday, 16 April 2004, 110 Fenton Hall

14-18 January 2002

Victor Guillemin

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Professor Guillemin will present the following three lectures:

  • Lecture 1: Betti numbers of polytopes and graphs
    4:00 p.m., Monday, 14 January 2002, 110 Fenton Hall
  • Lecture 2: The GKM theorem
    4:00 p.m., Wednesday, 16 January 2002, 110 Fenton Hall
  • Lecture 3: Multiplicative Morse theory for symplectic G-manifolds
    4:00 p.m., Friday, 18 January 2002, 110 Fenton Hall

25-27 October 2000

Dennis Sullivan

CUNY at Stony Brook

Professor Sullivan will present the following three lectures on Fluids, quantum theory and algebraic topology:

  • Lecture 1: Discrete modules
    4:00 p.m., Wednesday, 25 October 2000, 123 Pacific Hall
  • Lecture 2: Algebraic quantization
    4:00 p.m., Thursday, 26 October 2000, 110 Fenton Hall
  • Lecture 3: String topology
    4:00 p.m., Friday, 27 October 2000, 110 Fenton Hall

11-15 October 1999

Alexander Varchenko

University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill

Professor Varchenko will present the following three lectures on multidimensional hypergeometric functions and representation theory:

  • Lecture 1: The KZ differential equations and hypergeometric functions
    4:00 p.m., Monday, 11 October 1999, 110 Fenton Hall
  • Lecture 2: Statistical mechanics, R-matrices and qKZ difference equations
    4:00 p.m., Wednesday, 13 October 1999, 110 Fenton Hall
  • Lecture 3: The qKZ equations, q-hypergeometric functions, and quantization of geometry
    4:00 p.m., Friday, 15 October 1999, 110 Fenton Hall

11-15 October 1998

Jean-Pierre Serre

College de France, Paris

Professor Serre will present two lecture series on the following topics:

  • Lecture series 1: Finite subgroups of Lie groups
  • Lecture series 2: The notion of complete reducibility in group theory

Lecture notes are available for both series here.

March 1997

Efim Zelmanov

UC San Diego

 

March 1998

Philip Griffiths

 

October 1995

Clifford Taubes

Harvard University

 

January 1993

Yu I Manin

Max Planck Institut für Mathematik

 

January 1989

Michael Atiyah

Cambridge University, UK

 

November 1986

Victor Kac