EMS News

Andrei Okounkov to Deliver a Public Lecture at 8ECM Tomaž Pisanski (University of Primorska, Koper, Slovenia)

We are happy to followed extends, among other things, the representation announce that Fields theoretic understanding of the Gromov-Witten theory of medalist Andrei curves (and also of the point) obtained in the early 2000s Okounkov will deliver by Okounkov and Pandharipande. a public lecture at the In 2004, Okounkov was awarded an EMS prize for 8th European Con- work that “contributed greatly to the field of asymptotic gress of Mathematics! combinatorics.” In 2006, at the 25th International Con- Andrei Okounkov is a Russian mathematician who gress of Mathematicians in Madrid, Spain, he received works in and neighbouring areas the “for his contributions to bridging prob- of and . Enu- ability, representation theory and algebraic geometry.” merative geometry lies at the crossroads of all of these Andrei Okounkov is a professor at the Columbia fields of mathematics, and a lot of Okounkov’s recent University in the city of New York and at the Skolkovo work focuses on K-theoretic generalisations of classi- Institute of Science and Technology in . He also cal questions in enumerative geometry. In particular, a serves as the academic supervisor of HSE International K-theoretic generalisation of the Donaldson–Thomas- Laboratory of Representation Theory and Mathemati- style counting of curves in algebraic threefolds is an cal Physics. His previous positions include the Univer- exciting area at the forefront of current research with a sity of Chicago, University of California at Berkeley, and conjectural relation to counting membranes of M-theory . put forward by Nekrasov and Okounkov, and a geomet- We look forward to welcoming Professor Okoun- ric representation theory description of its basic building kov at the 8th European Congress of Mathematics in blocks obtained by Okounkov and A.Smirnov. Earlier Portorož, Slovenia! conjectures of Maulik–Nekrasov–Okounkov–Pandhari- Further details will be posted on our website, please pande, connecting cohomological DT counts with Gro- follow us on 8ecm.si for more news. mov–Witten theory of algebraic threefolds, in many ways shaped the developments in both fields. The proof of the MNOP conjectures for toric varieties by Maulik- The photo and CV of Tomaž Pisanski can be found in Oblomkov-Okounkov-Pandharipande and the work that previous Newsletter issues.

6 EMS Newsletter September 2019