University of Miami
Department of Mathematics
College of Arts and Sciences
Lecture Series
Dr. Andrei Okounkov
Princeton University
Recipient of a Fields Medal in 2006
will present
Recent Shortcuts to Witten's Conjecture
Monday, February 19, 2007, 4:00pm in Ungar Room 402
Friday, February 23, 2007, 4:30pm in Ungar Room 402
Refreshments served 30 minutes before each talk in Ungar Room 521
All interested persons are welcome to attend.
Abstract: Witten's conjecture of 1991 evaluates certain intersection numbers on the moduli spaces of curves using the Korteweg-de Vries equation. Several mathematical approaches to this statement were found, the first one due to Kontsevich. Recently, rather dramatic shortcuts to the goal were discovered. I will explain one of them, following the work of Lando and Kazarian. My aim is to make the lectures self-contained and accessible to general mathematical audience.
Andrei Okounkov was awarded the Fields Medal in 2006 "for his contributions bridging probability, representation theory and algebraic geometry".
