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Current Events Bulletin
Introduction to the Current Events Bulletin
Will the Riemann Hypothesis be proved this week? What is the Geometric Langlands Conjecture about? How could you best exploit a stream of data flowing by too fast to capture? I love the idea of having an expert explain such things to me in a brief, accessible way. I think we mathematicians are provoked to ask such questions by our sense that underneath the vastness of mathematics is a fundamental unity allowing us to look into many different corners -- though we couldn't possibly work in all of them. And I, like most of us, love common-room gossip.
The Current Events Bulletin Session at the Joint Mathematics Meetings, begun in 2003, is an event where the speakers do not report on their own work, but survey some of the most interesting current developments in mathematics, pure and applied. The wonderful tradition of the Bourbaki Seminar is an inspiration, but we aim for more accessible treatments and a wider range of subjects. I've been the organizer of these sessions since they started, but a broadly constituted advisory committee helps select the topics and speakers. Excellence in exposition is a prime consideration.
A written exposition greatly increases the number of people who can enjoy the product of the sessions, so speakers are asked to do the hard work of producing such articles. These are made into a booklet distributed at the meeting. Speakers are then invited to submit papers based on them to the Bulletin of the AMS, and this has led to many fine publications.
I hope you'll enjoy the papers produced from these sessions, but there's nothing like being at the talks -- don't miss them!
David Eisenbud, Organizer
University of California, Berkeley
Email David Eisenbud
Sessions, Speakers, Booklets and Bulletin of the AMS Papers
January 6, 2012 (Boston, MA) (booklet produced for meeting 6 MB)
Hynes Convention Center, 900 Boylston Street, Room 200
1:00 PM
Jeffrey F. Brock, Brown University
Assembling surfaces from random pants: mixing, matching and correcting in the proofs of the surface-subgroup and Ehrenpreis conjectures
The revolution in low-dimensional topology precipitated by Thurston continues - we will learn about two of the new breakthroughs descended from it.
2:00 PM
Daniel S. Freed, University of Texas at Austin
The cobordism hypothesis: quantum field theory + homotopy invariance = higher algebra
Lurie's spectacular work on the cobordism hypothesis is one of the latest demonstrations of the unreasonable effectiveness of physical theory in shaping recent mathematical thought.
3:00 PM
Gigliola Staffilani, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dispersive equations and their role beyond PDE
Everyone has heard of the Schrödinger equation, but few understand its surprising interplay with other fields.
4:00 PM
Umesh Vazirani, University of California, Berkeley
How does quantum mechanics scale?
Could quantum mechanics, bizarre as it is, possibly be true? Some aspects have been exquisitely tested, but others have not - they are too complex. Here is a computer science view of that complexity, and of how the difficulties could shape future developments.
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January 8, 2011 (New Orleans, LA) (booklet produced for meeting 3 MB)
Luca Trevisan
Khot's Unique Games Conjecture: Its consequences and the evidence for and against
Thomas Scanlon
Counting special points: logic, Diophantine geometry and transcendence theory
Ulrike Tillmann
Spaces of graphs and surfaces
David Nadler
The Geometric Nature of the Fundamental Lemma
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