A Year in Review
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Caucher Birkar — from Asylum Seeker to Fields Medal Winner at Cambridge
MATHS, 1 Caucher Birkar, 41, at VERSION Cambridge University, photographed by Jude Edginton REPR O OP HEARD THE ONE ABOUT THE ASYLUM SEEKER SUBS WHO WANDERED INTO A BRITISH UNIVERSITY... A RT AND CAME OUT A MATHS SUPERSTAR? PR ODUCTION CLIENT Caucher Birkar grew up in a Kurdish peasant family in a war zone and arrived in Nottingham as a refugee – now he has received the mathematics equivalent of the Nobel prize. By Tom Whipple BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 91TTM1940232.pgs 01.04.2019 17:39 MATHS, 2 VERSION ineteen years ago, the mathematics Caucher Birkar in Isfahan, Receiving the Fields Medal If that makes sense, congratulations: you department at the University of Iran, in 1999 in Rio de Janeiro, 2018 now have a very hazy understanding of Nottingham received an email algebraic geometry. This is the field that from an asylum seeker who Birkar works in. wanted to talk to someone about The problem with explaining maths is REPR algebraic geometry. not, or at least not always, the stupidity of his They replied and invited him in. listeners. It is more fundamental than that: O OP N So it was that, shortly afterwards, it is language. Mathematics is not designed Caucher Birkar, the 21-year-old to be described in words. It is designed to be son of a Kurdish peasant family, described in mathematics. This is the great stood in front of Ivan Fesenko, a professor at triumph of the subject. It was why a Kurdish Nottingham, and began speaking in broken asylum seeker with bad English could convince SUBS English. -
Cédric VILLANI: Curriculum Vitae (Last Updated August 4, 2012)
C´edric VILLANI: Curriculum Vitae (last updated August 4, 2012) Professor of the Universit´ede Lyon Director of the Institut Henri Poincar´e 11 rue Pierre et Marie Curie, F-75230 Paris Cedex 05, FRANCE. Tel.: +33 1 44 27 64 18, fax: +33 1 46 34 04 56. E-Mail: [email protected] Internet address: http://math.univ-lyon1.fr/~villani Personal information - Born October 5, 1973 in Brive-la-Gaillarde (France); french citizen - age 38, two children - languages: french (native), english (fluent), italian - hobbies: walking, music (piano) Positions held - From 2000 to 2010 I have been professor (mathematics) in the Ecole´ Normale Sup´erieure de Lyon, where I did research and teaching up to graduate level. In September 2010 I moved to the Universit´eClaude Bernard Lyon I. - Since July 2009 I am director of the Institut Henri Poincar´e(Paris), where I do research and administration. I am the coordinator of the CARMIN structure, which gathers the four international french institutes for mathematics: CIRM, CIMPA, IHP, IHES.´ - Invited member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (January–June 2009) - Visiting Research Miller Professor at the University of Berkeley (January–May 2004) - Visiting Assistant Professor at the Georgia Tech Institute, Atlanta (Fall 1999) - Student, then agr´eg´e-pr´eparateur (“tutor”) at the ENS, Paris (1992-2000) Diplomas, titles and awards - Fields Medal (2010) - Fermat Prize (2009) - Henri Poincar´ePrize of the International Association of Mathematical Physics (2009) - Prize of the European Mathematical Society (2008) - Jacques Herbrand Prize of the Academy of Sciences (2007) - Invited lecturer at the International Congress of Mathematicians (Madrid, 2006) - Institut Universitaire de France (2006) - Harold Grad lecturer (2004) - Plenary lecturer at the International Congress of Mathematical Physics (Lisbonne, 2003) - Peccot-Vimont Prize and Cours Peccot of the Coll`ege de France (2003) - Louis Armand Prize of the Academy of Sciences (2001) - PhD Thesis (1998; advisor P.-L. -
Birational Geometry of Algebraic Varieties
Proc. Int. Cong. of Math. – 2018 Rio de Janeiro, Vol. 1 (563–588) BIRATIONAL GEOMETRY OF ALGEBRAIC VARIETIES Caucher Birkar 1 Introduction This is a report on some of the main developments in birational geometry in recent years focusing on the minimal model program, Fano varieties, singularities and related topics, in characteristic zero. This is not a comprehensive survey of all advances in birational geometry, e.g. we will not touch upon the positive characteristic case which is a very active area of research. We will work over an algebraically closed field k of characteristic zero. Varieties are all quasi-projective. Birational geometry, with the so-called minimal model program at its core, aims to classify algebraic varieties up to birational isomorphism by identifying “nice” elements in each birational class and then classifying such elements, e.g study their moduli spaces. Two varieties are birational if they contain isomorphic open subsets. In dimension one, a nice element in a birational class is simply a smooth and projective element. In higher dimension though there are infinitely many such elements in each class, so picking a rep- resentative is a very challenging problem. Before going any further lets introduce the canonical divisor. 1.1 Canonical divisor. To understand a variety X one studies subvarieties and sheaves on it. Subvarieties of codimension one and their linear combinations, that is, divisors play a crucial role. Of particular importance is the canonical divisor KX . When X is smooth this is the divisor (class) whose associated sheaf OX (KX ) is the canonical sheaf !X := det ΩX where ΩX is the sheaf of regular differential forms. -
Dynamics, Equations and Applications Book of Abstracts Session
DYNAMICS, EQUATIONS AND APPLICATIONS BOOK OF ABSTRACTS SESSION D21 AGH University of Science and Technology Kraków, Poland 1620 September 2019 2 Dynamics, Equations and Applications CONTENTS Plenary lectures 7 Artur Avila, GENERIC CONSERVATIVE DYNAMICS . .7 Alessio Figalli, ON THE REGULARITY OF STABLE SOLUTIONS TO SEMI- LINEAR ELLIPTIC PDES . .7 Martin Hairer, RANDOM LOOPS . .8 Stanislav Smirnov, 2D PERCOLATION REVISITED . .8 Shing-Tung Yau, STABILITY AND NONLINEAR PDES IN MIRROR SYMMETRY8 Maciej Zworski, FROM CLASSICAL TO QUANTUM AND BACK . .9 Public lecture 11 Alessio Figalli, FROM OPTIMAL TRANSPORT TO SOAP BUBBLES AND CLOUDS: A PERSONAL JOURNEY . 11 Invited talks of part D2 13 Stefano Bianchini, DIFFERENTIABILITY OF THE FLOW FOR BV VECTOR FIELDS . 13 Yoshikazu Giga, ON THE LARGE TIME BEHAVIOR OF SOLUTIONS TO BIRTH AND SPREAD TYPE EQUATIONS . 14 David Jerison, THE TWO HYPERPLANE CONJECTURE . 14 3 4 Dynamics, Equations and Applications Sergiu Klainerman, ON THE NONLINEAR STABILITY OF BLACK HOLES . 15 Aleksandr Logunov, ZERO SETS OF LAPLACE EIGENFUCNTIONS . 16 Felix Otto, EFFECTIVE BEHAVIOR OF RANDOM MEDIA . 17 Endre Süli, IMPLICITLY CONSTITUTED FLUID FLOW MODELS: ANALYSIS AND APPROXIMATION . 17 András Vasy, GLOBAL ANALYSIS VIA MICROLOCAL TOOLS: FREDHOLM THEORY IN NON-ELLIPTIC SETTINGS . 19 Luis Vega, THE VORTEX FILAMENT EQUATION, THE TALBOT EFFECT, AND NON-CIRCULAR JETS . 20 Enrique Zuazua, POPULATION DYNAMICS AND CONTROL . 20 Talks of session D21 23 Giovanni Bellettini, ON THE RELAXED AREA OF THE GRAPH OF NONS- MOOTH MAPS FROM THE PLANE TO THE PLANE . 23 Sun-Sig Byun, GLOBAL GRADIENT ESTIMATES FOR NONLINEAR ELLIP- TIC PROBLEMS WITH NONSTANDARD GROWTH . 24 Juan Calvo, A BRIEF PERSPECTIVE ON TEMPERED DIFFUSION EQUATIONS 25 Giacomo Canevari, THE SET OF TOPOLOGICAL SINGULARITIES OF VECTOR- VALUED MAPS . -
Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, UCLA Award/Institution #0439872-013151000 Annual Progress Report for 2009-2010 August 1, 2011
Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, UCLA Award/Institution #0439872-013151000 Annual Progress Report for 2009-2010 August 1, 2011 TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 2 A. PARTICIPANT LIST 3 B. FINANCIAL SUPPORT LIST 4 C. INCOME AND EXPENDITURE REPORT 4 D. POSTDOCTORAL PLACEMENT LIST 5 E. INSTITUTE DIRECTORS‘ MEETING REPORT 6 F. PARTICIPANT SUMMARY 12 G. POSTDOCTORAL PROGRAM SUMMARY 13 H. GRADUATE STUDENT PROGRAM SUMMARY 14 I. UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT PROGRAM SUMMARY 15 J. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION 15 K. PROGRAM CONSULTANT LIST 38 L. PUBLICATIONS LIST 50 M. INDUSTRIAL AND GOVERNMENTAL INVOLVEMENT 51 N. EXTERNAL SUPPORT 52 O. COMMITTEE MEMBERSHIP 53 P. CONTINUING IMPACT OF PAST IPAM PROGRAMS 54 APPENDIX 1: PUBLICATIONS (SELF-REPORTED) 2009-2010 58 Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, UCLA Award/Institution #0439872-013151000 Annual Progress Report for 2009-2010 August 1, 2011 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Highlights of IPAM‘s accomplishments and activities of the fiscal year 2009-2010 include: IPAM held two long programs during 2009-2010: o Combinatorics (fall 2009) o Climate Modeling (spring 2010) IPAM‘s 2010 winter workshops continued the tradition of focusing on emerging topics where Mathematics plays an important role: o New Directions in Financial Mathematics o Metamaterials: Applications, Analysis and Modeling o Mathematical Problems, Models and Methods in Biomedical Imaging o Statistical and Learning-Theoretic Challenges in Data Privacy IPAM sponsored reunion conferences for four long programs: Optimal Transport, Random Shapes, Search Engines and Internet MRA IPAM sponsored three public lectures since August. Noga Alon presented ―The Combinatorics of Voting Paradoxes‖ on October 5, 2009. Pierre-Louis Lions presented ―On Mean Field Games‖ on January 5, 2010. -
Party Time for Mathematicians in Heidelberg
Mathematical Communities Marjorie Senechal, Editor eidelberg, one of Germany’s ancient places of Party Time HHlearning, is making a new bid for fame with the Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF). Each year, two hundred young researchers from all over the world—one for Mathematicians hundred mathematicians and one hundred computer scientists—are selected by application to attend the one- week event, which is usually held in September. The young in Heidelberg scientists attend lectures by preeminent scholars, all of whom are laureates of the Abel Prize (awarded by the OSMO PEKONEN Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters), the Fields Medal (awarded by the International Mathematical Union), the Nevanlinna Prize (awarded by the International Math- ematical Union and the University of Helsinki, Finland), or the Computing Prize and the Turing Prize (both awarded This column is a forum for discussion of mathematical by the Association for Computing Machinery). communities throughout the world, and through all In 2018, for instance, the following eminences appeared as lecturers at the sixth HLF, which I attended as a science time. Our definition of ‘‘mathematical community’’ is journalist: Sir Michael Atiyah and Gregory Margulis (both Abel laureates and Fields medalists); the Abel laureate the broadest: ‘‘schools’’ of mathematics, circles of Srinivasa S. R. Varadhan; the Fields medalists Caucher Bir- kar, Gerd Faltings, Alessio Figalli, Shigefumi Mori, Bào correspondence, mathematical societies, student Chaˆu Ngoˆ, Wendelin Werner, and Efim Zelmanov; Robert organizations, extracurricular educational activities Endre Tarjan and Leslie G. Valiant (who are both Nevan- linna and Turing laureates); the Nevanlinna laureate (math camps, math museums, math clubs), and more. -
Arxiv:1609.05543V2 [Math.AG] 1 Dec 2020 Ewrs Aovreis One Aiis Iersystem Linear Families, Bounded Varieties, Program
Singularities of linear systems and boundedness of Fano varieties Caucher Birkar Abstract. We study log canonical thresholds (also called global log canonical threshold or α-invariant) of R-linear systems. We prove existence of positive lower bounds in different settings, in particular, proving a conjecture of Ambro. We then show that the Borisov- Alexeev-Borisov conjecture holds, that is, given a natural number d and a positive real number ǫ, the set of Fano varieties of dimension d with ǫ-log canonical singularities forms a bounded family. This implies that birational automorphism groups of rationally connected varieties are Jordan which in particular answers a question of Serre. Next we show that if the log canonical threshold of the anti-canonical system of a Fano variety is at most one, then it is computed by some divisor, answering a question of Tian in this case. Contents 1. Introduction 2 2. Preliminaries 9 2.1. Divisors 9 2.2. Pairs and singularities 10 2.4. Fano pairs 10 2.5. Minimal models, Mori fibre spaces, and MMP 10 2.6. Plt pairs 11 2.8. Bounded families of pairs 12 2.9. Effective birationality and birational boundedness 12 2.12. Complements 12 2.14. From bounds on lc thresholds to boundedness of varieties 13 2.16. Sequences of blowups 13 2.18. Analytic pairs and analytic neighbourhoods of algebraic singularities 14 2.19. Etale´ morphisms 15 2.22. Toric varieties and toric MMP 15 arXiv:1609.05543v2 [math.AG] 1 Dec 2020 2.23. Bounded small modifications 15 2.25. Semi-ample divisors 16 3. -
Number-Theory Prodigy Among Winners of Coveted Maths Prize Fields Medals Awarded to Researchers in Number Theory, Geometry and Differential Equations
NEWS IN FOCUS nature means these states are resistant to topological states. But in 2017, Andrei Bernevig, Bernevig and his colleagues also used their change, and thus stable to temperature fluctua- a physicist at Princeton University in New Jersey, method to create a new topological catalogue. tions and physical distortion — features that and Ashvin Vishwanath, at Harvard University His team used the Inorganic Crystal Structure could make them useful in devices. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, separately pio- Database, filtering its 184,270 materials to find Physicists have been investigating one class, neered approaches6,7 that speed up the process. 5,797 “high-quality” topological materials. The known as topological insulators, since the prop- The techniques use algorithms to sort materi- researchers plan to add the ability to check a erty was first seen experimentally in 2D in a thin als automatically into material’s topology, and certain related fea- sheet of mercury telluride4 in 2007 and in 3D in “It’s up to databases on the basis tures, to the popular Bilbao Crystallographic bismuth antimony a year later5. Topological insu- experimentalists of their chemistry and Server. A third group — including Vishwa- lators consist mostly of insulating material, yet to uncover properties that result nath — also found hundreds of topological their surfaces are great conductors. And because new exciting from symmetries in materials. currents on the surface can be controlled using physical their structure. The Experimentalists have their work cut out. magnetic fields, physicists think the materials phenomena.” symmetries can be Researchers will be able to comb the databases could find uses in energy-efficient ‘spintronic’ used to predict how to find new topological materials to explore. -
Public Recognition and Media Coverage of Mathematical Achievements
Journal of Humanistic Mathematics Volume 9 | Issue 2 July 2019 Public Recognition and Media Coverage of Mathematical Achievements Juan Matías Sepulcre University of Alicante Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.claremont.edu/jhm Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons, and the Mathematics Commons Recommended Citation Sepulcre, J. "Public Recognition and Media Coverage of Mathematical Achievements," Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Volume 9 Issue 2 (July 2019), pages 93-129. DOI: 10.5642/ jhummath.201902.08 . Available at: https://scholarship.claremont.edu/jhm/vol9/iss2/8 ©2019 by the authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. JHM is an open access bi-annual journal sponsored by the Claremont Center for the Mathematical Sciences and published by the Claremont Colleges Library | ISSN 2159-8118 | http://scholarship.claremont.edu/jhm/ The editorial staff of JHM works hard to make sure the scholarship disseminated in JHM is accurate and upholds professional ethical guidelines. However the views and opinions expressed in each published manuscript belong exclusively to the individual contributor(s). The publisher and the editors do not endorse or accept responsibility for them. See https://scholarship.claremont.edu/jhm/policies.html for more information. Public Recognition and Media Coverage of Mathematical Achievements Juan Matías Sepulcre Department of Mathematics, University of Alicante, Alicante, SPAIN [email protected] Synopsis This report aims to convince readers that there are clear indications that society is increasingly taking a greater interest in science and particularly in mathemat- ics, and thus society in general has come to recognise, through different awards, privileges, and distinctions, the work of many mathematicians. -
NEWSLETTER Issue: 481 - March 2019
i “NLMS_481” — 2019/2/13 — 11:04 — page 1 — #1 i i i NEWSLETTER Issue: 481 - March 2019 HILBERT’S FRACTALS CHANGING SIXTH AND A-LEVEL PROBLEM GEOMETRY STANDARDS i i i i i “NLMS_481” — 2019/2/13 — 11:04 — page 2 — #2 i i i EDITOR-IN-CHIEF COPYRIGHT NOTICE Iain Moatt (Royal Holloway, University of London) News items and notices in the Newsletter may [email protected] be freely used elsewhere unless otherwise stated, although attribution is requested when reproducing whole articles. Contributions to EDITORIAL BOARD the Newsletter are made under a non-exclusive June Barrow-Green (Open University) licence; please contact the author or photog- Tomasz Brzezinski (Swansea University) rapher for the rights to reproduce. The LMS Lucia Di Vizio (CNRS) cannot accept responsibility for the accuracy of Jonathan Fraser (University of St Andrews) information in the Newsletter. Views expressed Jelena Grbic´ (University of Southampton) do not necessarily represent the views or policy Thomas Hudson (University of Warwick) of the Editorial Team or London Mathematical Stephen Huggett (University of Plymouth) Society. Adam Johansen (University of Warwick) Bill Lionheart (University of Manchester) ISSN: 2516-3841 (Print) Mark McCartney (Ulster University) ISSN: 2516-385X (Online) Kitty Meeks (University of Glasgow) DOI: 10.1112/NLMS Vicky Neale (University of Oxford) Susan Oakes (London Mathematical Society) David Singerman (University of Southampton) Andrew Wade (Durham University) NEWSLETTER WEBSITE The Newsletter is freely available electronically Early Career Content Editor: Vicky Neale at lms.ac.uk/publications/lms-newsletter. News Editor: Susan Oakes Reviews Editor: Mark McCartney MEMBERSHIP CORRESPONDENTS AND STAFF Joining the LMS is a straightforward process. -
Mathematics People
NEWS Mathematics People or up to ten years post-PhD, are eligible. Awardees receive Braverman Receives US$1 million distributed over five years. NSF Waterman Award —From an NSF announcement Mark Braverman of Princeton University has been selected as a Prizes of the Association cowinner of the 2019 Alan T. Wa- terman Award of the National Sci- for Women in Mathematics ence Foundation (NSF) for his work in complexity theory, algorithms, The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) has and the limits of what is possible awarded a number of prizes in 2019. computationally. According to the Catherine Sulem of the Univer- prize citation, his work “focuses on sity of Toronto has been named the Mark Braverman complexity, including looking at Sonia Kovalevsky Lecturer for 2019 by algorithms for optimization, which, the Association for Women in Math- when applied, might mean planning a route—how to get ematics (AWM) and the Society for from point A to point B in the most efficient way possible. Industrial and Applied Mathematics “Algorithms are everywhere. Most people know that (SIAM). The citation states: “Sulem every time someone uses a computer, algorithms are at is a prominent applied mathemati- work. But they also occur in nature. Braverman examines cian working in the area of nonlin- randomness in the motion of objects, down to the erratic Catherine Sulem ear analysis and partial differential movement of particles in a fluid. equations. She has specialized on “His work is also tied to algorithms required for learning, the topic of singularity development in solutions of the which serve as building blocks to artificial intelligence, and nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLS), on the problem of has even had implications for the foundations of quantum free surface water waves, and on Hamiltonian partial differ- computing. -
NEWSLETTER Issue: 478 - September 2018
i “NLMS_478” — 2018/8/17 — 16:44 — page 1 — #1 i i i NEWSLETTER Issue: 478 - September 2018 APOLLONIUS GRAPH THEORY MATHEMATICS CIRCLE AND BOVINE OF LANGUAGE COUNTING EPIDEMIOLOGY AND GRAMMAR i i i i i “NLMS_478” — 2018/8/17 — 16:44 — page 2 — #2 i i i EDITOR-IN-CHIEF COPYRIGHT NOTICE Iain Moatt (Royal Holloway, University of London) News items and notices in the Newsletter may [email protected] be freely used elsewhere unless otherwise stated, although attribution is requested when reproducing whole articles. Contributions to EDITORIAL BOARD the Newsletter are made under a non-exclusive June Barrow-Green (Open University) licence; please contact the author or photog- Tomasz Brzezinski (Swansea University) rapher for the rights to reproduce. The LMS Lucia Di Vizio (CNRS) cannot accept responsibility for the accuracy of Jonathan Fraser (University of St Andrews) information in the Newsletter. Views expressed Jelena Grbin´ (University of Southampton) do not necessarily represent the views or policy Thomas Hudson (University of Warwick) of the Editorial Team or London Mathematical Stephen Huggett (University of Plymouth) Society. Adam Johansen (University of Warwick) Bill Lionheart (University of Manchester) ISSN: 2516-3841 (Print) Mark McCartney (Ulster University) ISSN: 2516-385X (Online) Kitty Meeks (University of Glasgow) DOI: 10.1112/NLMS Vicky Neale (University of Oxford) Susan Oakes (London Mathematical Society) David Singerman (University of Southampton) Andrew Wade (Durham University) NEWSLETTER WEBSITE The Newsletter is freely available electronically Early Career Content Editor: Vicky Neale at lms.ac.uk/publications/lms-newsletter. News Editor: Susan Oakes Reviews Editor: Mark McCartney MEMBERSHIP CORRESPONDENTS AND STAFF Joining the LMS is a straightforward process.