About:

ICMS and the Jack Carr Fund were delighted to host the Inaugural Jack Carr lecture, given by the 2010 Fields Medallist Professor Ngô Bảo Châu

The lecture, which we hoped to make an annual event, commemorated the outstanding achievements of the late Professor Jack Carr FRSE, formerly Head of Department of Mathematics at Heriot-Watt University. He was not only an international authority in his field of differential equations and dynamical systems, but was also widely recognised for a selfless commitment to the University, Scottish, and international communities. He had a special interest in fostering mathematics in African and other developing countries. His links with colleagues at Edinburgh University helped establish the ICMS and also the Maxwell Institute.

Speaker: Ngô Bảo Châu (University of Chicago/Vietnam Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics)

On the functional equation of automorphic L-functions

Automorphic L-functions, introduced by Langlands in the late 1960s, are expected to satisfy a functional equation similar to the functional equation of Riemann's zeta function. The functional equation would follow from the Langlands' functoriality conjecture, which is one of the far-reaching goals of the Langlands program, and in a sense is equivalent to it. Around 2000, Braverman and Kazhdan formulated a new approach to the functional equation, not following the route of functoriality but attempting to generalize the Fourier analysis on adeles used by Tate to prove the functional equation of the Riemann zeta function. I reported some recent progress in this approach.

The lecture was followed by a musical interlude contributed by members of Jack's family, Emily Carr-Martin and Sam Carr.

Programme:

17:00 Welcome/Introduction

17:05 Ngô Bảo Châu

18:00 Q&A

18:15 Musical Interlude

18:35 End of Event