Millennium Prize Problems Lecture – Barry Mazur: About the Birch and Swinnerton–Dyer Conjecture
Date: February 4, 2026
Time: 5:00–6:00 pm
Location: Harvard Science Center Hall D, 1 Oxford St., Cambridge MA
Speaker: Barry Mazur, Harvard University
Title: About the Birch and Swinnerton–Dyer Conjecture
Abstract:
In the 1950s Bryan Birch and Peter Swinnerton–Dyer made computations that suggested a striking connection between a basic global invariant of an elliptic curve E over the field of rational numbers (namely, the rank of its group of rational points) and certain asymptotics of its local arithmetic invariants (i.e., the number of its rational points over finite fields).
This initial observation has evolved into their conjecture. My lecture will be an introduction to the general ideas behind its ever-expanding development.
Register to attend in-person.
Register for the Zoom Webinar.
Read more about the Birch and Swinnerton–Dyer Conjecture at the Clay Math website.
Organizers: Martin Bridson, Clay Mathematics Institute | Dan Freed, Harvard University and CMSA | Mike Hopkins, Harvard University
Millennium Prize Problems Lecture Series