Background

The Erdős Memorial Lecture is an annual invited address made possible by a fund created by Andrew Beal, a Dallas banker and mathematics enthusiast. The Lecture is named for the prolific mathematician Paul Erdős (1913-1996). The Beal Prize Fund, now US$100,000, is being held by the AMS until it is awarded for a correct solution to the Beal Conjecture (see www.math.unt.edu/~mauldin/beal.html). At Mr. Beal's request, the interest from the fund is used to support the Erdős Memorial Lecture.

Erdős Memorial Lecturers (Upcoming)

The 2012 Erdős Memorial Lecture will be held at the 2012 Fall Western Section Meeting, University of Arizona, on October 27, 2012. The lecturer will be Ken Ono, Emory University. Title and Location TBA

The 2013 Erdős Memorial Lecture will be held at the 2013 Fall Eastern Section Meeting, Temple University, on October 12, 2013. The lecturer will be Barry Mazur, Harvard University. Title and Location TBA

Erdős Memorial Lecturers (Past)

10/15/11 University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, Fall Central Section Meeting
Emmanuel Candes, Stanford University
Recovering the unseen: some recent advances in low-rank matrix reconstruction
http://www.ams.org/amsmtgs/2185_abstracts/1074-49-4.pdf

3/27/10 University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, Spring Southeastern Section Meeting
Doron Zeilberger, Rutgers University
3x+1
http://www.ams.org/amsmtgs/2162_abstracts/1057-05-6.pdf

3/28/09 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, Spring Central Section Meeting
Jeffrey Lagarias, University of Michigan
From Apollonian circle packings to Fibonacci numbers
http://www.ams.org/amsmtgs/2152_abstracts/1047-11-4.pdf

3/15/08 Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University, New York City, NY, Spring Northeast Section Meeting
William Timothy Gowers, University of Cambridge
Decomposing bounded functions
www.ams.org/amsmtgs/2149_abstracts/1036-41-16.pdf

3/3/07 Davidson College, Davidson, NC, Spring Southeastern Section Meeting
Andrew J. Granville, Université de Montréal
Erdős Dream and Pretentious Characters
http://www.ams.org/amsmtgs/2134_abstracts/1024-11-4.pdf

4/8/06 University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, Spring Central Section Meeting
Béla Bollobás, University of Memphis and Cambridge University
Inhomogeneous Random Graphs
http://www.ams.org/amsmtgs/2130_abstracts/1016-00-6.pdf

10/8/05 Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, Eastern Section Meeting
Persi Diaconis, Stanford University
Erdős picture of "most things"
http:///dynamic_archive/home-news-2005.html#erdos2005

5/17/04 Hyatt Regency, Houston, TX, Sixth AMS-SMM International Meeting
Bernd Sturmfels, University of California Berkeley
Tropical geometry
http:///dynamic_archive/home-news-2004.html#erdos2004

10/2/03 University of Colorado, Central-Western Joint Section Meeting
Avi Wigderson, Institute for Advanced Study
Some insights of computational complexity theory
http:///dynamic_archive/home-news-2003.html#erdos2003

10/6/02, Northeastern University, Eastern Section Meeting
Hillel Furstenberg, Einstein Institute of Mathematics
The conjecture of Erdős-Turan and Its Impact on Ergodic Theory
http:///dynamic_archive/home-news-2002.html#erdos

3/16/01 University of South Carolina, Southeast Section Meeting
Carl Pomerance, Bell Laboratories
Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Paul Erdős, and me

9/23/00 University of Toronto, Central Section Meeting
John H. Conway, Princeton University
New ways to look at quadratic forms

5/19/99 University of North Texas, Fourth AMS-SMM International Meeting
Ronald L. Graham, AT&T Labs
Paul Erdős and his favorite problems in number theory