Joint Colloquium: Masoud Kamgarpour -- Symmetries in mathematics: a personal perspective

Speaker: Dr.  Masoud Kamgarpour 

https://sites.google.com/site/masoudkomi/home 

Time: Friday, March 14, 2:30--3:30PM 

Room: Carslaw 175, the University of Sydney 

Lunch plan: we meet near Level 2 entrance to Carslaw Building around 1PM.  The lunch
would be at Law Annex Cafe with reservation at 1:10PM.  

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Title: Symmetries in mathematics: a personal perspective 

Abstract: Studying symmetries is one of the most powerful tools available to scientists
for making sense of the world.  In this talk, I will start by explaining how symmetries
of geometric objects give rise to familiar matrix groups.  Following suggestions of
physicists, we will replace points of our spaces with strings or loops, thus arriving at
loop spaces and loop groups.  I will then explain some of the methods available for
understanding the structure of loop groups and their representations.  We will then
switch gear and consider symmetries of certain differential equations.  Here, too, we
will see the loop group intervening.  Finally, I will explain an intriguing conjectural
relationship, suggested by the Langlands' philosophy, between differential equations and
representations of loop groups.  

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Joint Colloquium web site: 

http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/SemConf/JointColloquium/index.html