Annual Report 2005 - Fields Institute - University of Toronto

including the topology of moduli spaces and moduli spaces
on Riemann surfaces. His talk focussed on related work
in integrable systems, from the viewpoint of symplectic
geometry. The relation between the geometric concept of
Hamiltonion structure and the analytic one leads to beautiful
correspondences (loop agebras and Fourier series, for
example) which can be summed up as a meta-theorem:
“Things are much simpler (and more elegant) than one has
any right to expect.”
Barbara Sherwood Lollar
Compound specific stable isotope analysis: a novel tool for
investigation of biodegradation
Barbara Lollar is Professor of Geology and Director of the
Stable Isotope Laboratory at the University of Toronto. Her
lecture focused on a piece of geochemical detective work:
using properties of stable isotopes of carbon and of hydrogen
to study biodegradation. The context is underground
transport of petroleum hydrocarbons and chlorinated solvents.
These contaminants, which pose hazards to human
health, are attacked by naturally occurring microbes in the
soil, and broken down into harmless compounds. However,
when a pollutant that was present disappears, how do we
know whether it has really been converted as intended,
or has just flowed downstream? Because degradation,
unlike other processes like dissolution, is not isotopically
conservative, one can use measurements of the fraction
of different isotopes at different times and places in the
contaminated field to discover whether biodegradation is
taking place. A possible future project is to combine this
chemical research with mathematical and computational
modelling of the flow process itself, to better direct remediation
efforts.
It was a fitting conclusion to a program that gave so many
connections between mathematical structures and other
sciences, and between one area of mathematical sciences
and another.
L e c t u r e s a n d S p e c i a l E v e n t s
Fields Institute 2005 ANNUAL REPORT 46