EVENT DETAILS AND ABSTRACT

Title: An introduction to the work of Robert Langlands
Speaker: Matthew Emerton
Speaker Info: Northwestern
Brief Description:
Special Note:
Abstract:

In the late 60s and early 70s, Robert Langlands developed a web of conjectures in the theory of automorphic forms, which had, and continue to have, a profound influence on the development of that theory and related areas of mathematics, such as number theory and group representation theory.

In this talk I will try to explain (at least a part of) what is perhaps the most significant of Langlands conjectures, namely his functoriality conjecture for automorphic forms. This conjecture ties together classical concepts from the theory of modular forms, analytic and algebraic number theory, Lie theory, and spectral theory and harmonic analysis. While many non-trivial cases of the conjecture have been proved, the conjecture in general remains open.

The talk is intended to be accessible to non-experts and students.