University of Miami
Department of Mathematics
Bass Professor of Humanities and Sciences
Stanford University
will present
Spaces of Positive Curvature
Monday, February 22, 2010, 5:00pm
The Wesley Center, 1210 Stanford Drive
Reception immediately following the lecture
All interested persons are welcome to attend.
Abstract: In 1854 Riemann extended Gauss' ideas on curved geometries from two dimensional surfaces to higher dimensions. Since that time mathematicians have tried to understand the structure of geometric spaces based on their curvature properties. It turns out that basic questions remain unanswered in this direction. In this lecture we will give a history of such questions for spaces with positive curvature, and describe the progress that has been made as well as some outstanding conjectures which remain to be settled.
Dr. Schoen is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. Prior to joining Stanford he held positions at the Courant Institute, UC Berkeley and UC San Diego. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Schoen is a past recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, and in 1989 he was awarded the Bôcher Prize by the American Mathematical Society for his resolution of the famous Yamabe problem.
The McKnight-Zame Distinguished Lecture Series is made possible by a generous donation from Dr. Jeffry Fuqua, who received his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Miami in 1972 under the direction of Professor James McKnight. This lecture series is named in honor of both Professor McKnight and Professor Alan Zame, who was a close mentor of Dr. Fuqua while he was a student at the University of Miami.
For more information contact Dania Puerto at d.puerto@math.miami.edu or 305.284.2575. Parking is available in the Pavia Garage on the Coral Gables campus of the University of Miami.
