Friday, March 28
4:00 p.m.
Avery Hall 115
A reception will precede the lecture in room 348 of Avery Hall at 3pm. All faculty, staff, and students, and lecture attendees are welcome to attend.
The Rowlee Lecture will be accompanied by a short conference on Commutative Algebra on Mixed Characteristic on Saturday, March 29.
Speaker
Bhargav Bhatt
Institute of Advanced Study and Princeton University.
Title
The p-adic numbers: past and present
Abstract
For each prime number p, there is a number system — the p-adic number system — rather analogous to the standard (real) number system. This system was discovered in the late 1800s and has played a vital role in many areas of mathematics. The past 15 years have witnessed some major breakthroughs in our understanding of geometries built from this number system; this has had downstream effects, such as the solution of longstanding problems across a variety of fields. In this talk, I will first explain what the p-adic number system is, and then give a high-level overview of some of the new ideas that led to the recent developments.