3. Postdoctoral Program - MSRI

REPORT FROM MENTOR
June 2010
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Vigleik Angeltveit
Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2010 13:31:24 -0500
From: Peter May
To: hbarcelo@msri.org
This is a brief report on Vigleik's year as an MSRI postdoc at Chicago. His mathematics
is excellent, and my original letter to you probably needs no updating. He is hard at work
on trying to compute the algebraic K-theory of rings Z/p^nZ. That is a project dear to my
heart and has been ever since I naively gave it out as a thesis topic to a student of mine
over 25 years ago. There has been little progress since, and if anybody can get anywhere
on it, Vigleik can.
He and I have a joint paper in progress (my fault, not his, that progress has been slower
than it should be), and he has several other deep and worthwhile projects in progress.
He is a great member of our algebraic topology (and category theory) group, which has a
steady state of around seven graduate students and two postdocs. He is very helpful to the
students, combining mathematical expertise and good-humored camaraderie.
He has accepted a permanent job at the Australian National University in Melbourne
which, fortunately for our group, has a starting date in July, 2011. He will therefore
continue to be here for all of the next academic year. He is teaching just one course, a
quarter of undergraduate algebraic topology. He does a terrific job of it.
Please let me know if you would prefer a more detailed or more formal report.
Peter May
University of Chicago