CMSA/Tsinghua Math-Science Literature Lecture: Nicolai Reshetikhin, Yau Mathematical Sciences Center, Tsinghua University

Bong Lian (Brandeis) Title: From string theory and Moonshine to vertex algebras Abstract: This is a brief survey of the early historical development of vertex algebras, beginning in the seventies from Physics and Representation Theory. We shall also discuss some of the ideas that led to various early formulations of the theory’s foundation, and their relationships, as […]

Ciprian Manolescu (Stanford) Title: Four-dimensional topology Abstract: I will outline the history of four-dimensional topology. Some major events were the work of Donaldson and Freedman from 1982, and the introduction of the Seiberg-Witten equations in 1994. I will discuss these, and then move on to what has been done in the last 20 years, when the […]