Noncommutative Geometry (06w5007)

Organizers

Alain Connes (College de France)

Joachim Cuntz (University of Muenster)

(University of Toronto)

(University of Western Ontario)

Boris Tsygan (Northwestern University)

Description

Some of the world's leading experts in non-commutative geometry will meet at BIRS on April 8-13 to discuss the recent developments in this groundbreaking theory. The workshop is led by the very founder of non-commutative geometry, Alain Connes of the College de France and the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifique in Paris, who was awarded --among many other prizes-- the Fields Medal, and the Crawfoord Prize of the Swedish Academy of Sciences. Other co-organizers of the meeting are Joachim Cuntz (Muenster, Germany), George Elliott (Toronto), Masoud Khalkhali (Western Onatrio) and Boris Tsygan (Northwestern, USA).

A groundbreaking idea of non-commutative geometry, which is emerging as a dominant area of mathematics of the 21th century, is a radical revision of the very notions of space and space-time on which the whole edifice of modern theoretical physics is built. For example, the concept of renormalization, which is one of the most challenging and mysterious aspects of quantum field theory, has been recently demystified by Connes and collaborators, via a natural formulation within the realm of non-commutative geometry, and was shown to have fundamental connections with historically deep questions in number theory, such as the two centuries-old --but yet unsolved-- Riemann hypothesis.

The Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS) is a collaborative Canada-US-Mexico venture that provides an environment for creative interaction as well as the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and methods within the Mathematical Sciences, with related disciplines and with industry. The research station is located at The Banff Centre in Alberta and is administered by the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences, which itself is a collaborative venture between the major universities in Alberta, BC and Washington State.