Report for the academic year - Libraries - Institute for Advanced Study

THE SCHOOL OF MATHEMATICS
cohomology theory that is associated with a family of elliptic curves. By-ptoducts of the
theory are an explanation for congruencies involving modular forms, and computations
of homotopy groups of spheres that are more extensive than was possible before.
A new lecture series was inaugurated: The Ruth and Irving Adler Expository Lectures.
These were endowed by Professor Adler of the School of Natural Sciences, in honor of
his parents. It is anticipated that this series will be given annually. The object of this
series is to have clear expositions of mathematicals, rather than to insist on the newest
results. The first lecture was "Modules over Nonunital Rings," a lecture by D. Quillen of
Oxford.
In April, there were two workshops at the Institute which were held in partnership with
the Clay Mathematics Institute and the School of Mathematics. The first of these was
on Localization and Lyapunov Exponents, organized by J. Bourgain and T. Spencer. The
second workshop, on Recent Trends in Analytic Number Theory, was organized by
E. Bombieri and H. Iwaniec.
Much of the academic activity of the School of Mathematics revolves around informal
discussions and collaborations among the Members and with the Faculty. The School
continued to refine its mechanisms to encourage these interactions. This year, we began
a policy of encouraging home pages for members on our Web site, so that members will
know something about each other's work. In addition, we continued and enlarged the
practice of having short talks by all postdoctoral Members at the beginning of the year,
with an exposition of some aspect of their research interests.
In a bold experiment in mathematical outreach, R. Langlands delivered a series of lectures
for a general non-mathematical audience entitled, "The Practice of Mathematics." There
were eight lectures in the fall and eight lectures in the spring. They started with classical
constructions for Euclid, then the construction with ruler and compass of the regular hepta-
decagon by Gauss and moved through Kummer's work on Fermat's theorem. These lectures
have been videotaped, and both notes and cassettes ate available. Avi Wigderson gave a
Faculty Lecture entitled "The digital envelope
also intended for a general non-mathematical audience.
- a crash course in modern cryptography",
In May, Jean Bourgain was elected as a foreign member of the Polish Academy of Sci-
ences; in the month of June, he was elected a foreign associate of the French Academy of
Sciences.
The main building of the School of Mathematics has been renamed Simonyi Hall, after
Charles Simonyi, Distinguished Engineer, Microsoft Corporation, and Trustee of the
Institute, in recognition of his generous support of the programs of the School of Math-
ematics.
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