Second Abel Conference: A Mathematical Celebration of John Milnor

January 30 - February 01, 2012

Content

Overview

Advisory:

The IMA gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the conference from IBM Research and the University of Minnesota.

Poster:

SW1.30-2.1.12_poster.pdf

Organizers:

Alejandro Adem	University of British Columbia
Geir Ellingsrud	University of Oslo
Michael Hopkins	Harvard University
Robion Kirby	University of California, Berkeley
James Stasheff	University of Pennsylvania

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters named John Milnor the 2011 recipient of the Abel Prize "for his pioneering discoveries in topology, geometry and algebra."

John Milnor has received many awards and honours. He received the Fields Medal in 1962 for his work in differential topology when he was only 31. He was awarded the 2011 Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement by the American Mathematical Society. Milnor has previously won two other Steele Prizes from the AMS: for Mathematical Exposition (2004) and for Seminal Contribution to Research (1982). In 1989 Milnor received the Wolf Prize in Mathematics. John Milnor received the US National Medal of Science in 1967. He was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1963. Since 1994, he has been a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and in 2004 he became a member of the European Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters.

Schedule

Monday, January 30, 2012

10:00 am - 11:00 am	Registration and coffee	Keller 3-176
11:00 am - 11:15 am	Welcome to the IMA	Keller 3-180
11:15 am - 12:15 pm	Exotic spheres via topological modular forms Mark Behrens (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)	Keller 3-180
12:15 pm - 2:00 pm	Lunch
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm	Dynamical Milnor John Fornaess (University of Michigan)	Keller 3-180
3:00 pm - 3:10 pm	Group photo	Keller 3-180
3:10 pm - 3:30 pm	Coffee break	Keller 3-176
3:30 pm - 3:40 pm	Film Showing - Niles Johnson will screen his short film on the 7-dimensional exotic sphere Niles Johnson (University of Georgia)	Keller 3-180
3:40 pm - 4:40 pm	Around the genus-minimizing property of algebraic curves. Peter Kronheimer (Harvard University)	Keller 3-180
5:00 pm - 7:00 pm	Reception at the Campus Club conference room B&C

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

8:30 am - 9:00 am	Coffee	Keller 3-176
9:00 am - 10:00 am	Diffeomorphism groups of some high dimensional manifolds. Ib Madsen (University of Copenhagen)	Keller 3-180
10:00 am - 10:30 am	Coffee break	Keller 3-176
10:30 am - 11:30 am	Geometric structures in dimension four Gang Tian (Princeton University)	Keller 3-180
11:30 am - 2:00 pm	Lunch
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm	An overview of Heegaard Floer homology Peter Ozsvath (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)	Keller 3-180
3:00 pm - 3:30 pm	Coffee break	Keller 3-176
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm	Cobordisms: old and new Ulrike Tillmann (University of Oxford)	Keller 3-180
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm	Banquet at McNamara Alumni Center, Heritage Gallery

Wednesday, February 01, 2012

8:30 am - 9:00 am	Coffee	Keller 3-176
9:00 am - 10:00 am	The Milnor Conjectures and Quadratic Forms Parimala Raman (Emory University)	Keller 3-180
10:00 am - 10:30 am	Coffee break	Keller 3-176
10:30 am - 11:30 am	A solution to the Arf-Kervaire invariant problem Douglas Ravenel (University of Rochester)	Keller 3-180
11:30 am - 11:40 am	Break
11:40 am - 12:40 pm	On the homology of Lie groups made discrete Fabien Morel (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)	Keller 3-180
12:40 pm - 1:00 pm	Closing remarks	Keller 3-180

Participants

Name	Department	Affiliation
Alejandro Adem	Department of Mathematics	University of British Columbia
Anar Akhmedov	Mathematics Department	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Hyman Bass	Department of Mathematics	University of Michigan
Maria Basterra	Department of Mathematics & Statistics	University of New Hampshire
Mark Behrens	Department of Mathematics	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Julie Bergner	Department of Mathematics	University of California
Jodi Black	Department of Mathematics	Bucknell University
William Browder	Department of Mathematics	Princeton University
Sylvain Cappell	Courant Institute	New York University
Ionut Ciocan-Fontanine	School of Mathematics	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Barry Cipra		NONE
Frederick Cohen	Department of Mathematics	University of Rochester
Xiaoyi Cui	Department of Physics and Astronomy	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Isabel Darcy	Department of Mathematics	The University of Iowa
James Davis	Department of Mathematics	Indiana University
William Dwyer	Department of Mathematics	University of Notre Dame
Robert Edwards	Department of Mathematics	University of California, Los Angeles
Geir Ellingsrud	Department of Mathematics	University of Oslo
John Fornaess	Department of Mathematics	University of Michigan
Tingran Gao	Mathematics Department	Duke University
Hillel Gershenson		NONE
Samuel Gitler	Departamento de Matematicas	CINVESTAV
Robert Gulliver	School of Mathematics	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Ian Hambleton	Department of Mathematics & Statistics	McMaster University
Michael Hill	Department of Mathematics	University of Virginia
Michael Hopkins	Department of Mathematics	Harvard University
Miriam Huntley	Department of Applied Physics	Harvard University
Dale Husemoller	Max Planck Institute for Mathematics	Max Planck Institute for Mathematics
Bjørn Jahren	Department of Mathematics	University of Oslo
Dihua Jiang	Department of Mathematics	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Niles Johnson	Department of Mathematics	University of Georgia
Donald Kahn	Department of Mathematics	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Hee Jung Kim	Department of Mathematics	Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH)
Robion Kirby	Department of Mathematics	University of California, Berkeley
Peter Kronheimer	Department of Mathematics	Harvard University
Kee Yuen Lam	Department of Mathematics	University of British Columbia
Tsit Yuen Lam	Department of Mathematics	University of California, Berkeley
Tyler Lawson	School of Mathematics	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Lizao Li		University of Minnesota
Tian-Jun Li	Department of Mathematics	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Ayelet Lindenstrauss	Mathematics Department	Indiana University
Tom Lyche	Department of Informatics	University of Oslo
Ib Madsen	Department of Mathematics	University of Copenhagen
Albert Marden	School of Mathematics	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
John McCleary	Department of Mathematics	Vassar College
Dusa McDuff	Department of Mathematics	Barnard College
William Messing	School of Mathematics	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
John Milnor	Department of Mathematics	The State University of New York
Tom Milnor	Department of Mathematics	University of British Columbia
Jack Morava	Department of Mathematics	Johns Hopkins University
Fabien Morel	Mathematisches Institut	Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Walter Neumann	Department of Mathematics, Columbia University	Barnard College
Peter Olver	School of Mathematics	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Kent Orr	Mathematics Department	Indiana University
Peter Ozsvath	Department of Mathematics	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hyungju (Alan) Park	Department of Mathematics	Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH)
Erik Pedersen	Department of Mathematical Sciences	University of Copenhagen
Candice Price	Department of Mathematics	The University of Iowa
Karthik Pulivendal	Department of Electrical Engineering	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Changzheng Qu	School of Mathematics	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Anca Radulescu	Department of Psychology	University of Colorado
Parimala Raman	Department of Mathematics and Computer Science	Emory University
Andrew Ranicki	School of Mathematics	University of Edinburgh
Douglas Ravenel	Department of Mathematics	University of Rochester
Victor Reiner	School of Mathematics	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Jonathan Rogness	School of Mathematics	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Dale Rolfsen	Department of Mathematics	University of British Columbia
Xavier Ronaled	Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Jeff Rosoff	Department of Mathematics	Gustavus Adolphus College
Lee Rudolph	Department of Mathematics	Clark University
Radmila Sazdanović	Department of Mathematics	University of Pennsylvania
Robert Scharein		Hypnagogic Software
George Sell	School of Mathematics	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Laurence Siebenmann	Laboratoire de Mathématique	Université de Paris XI (Paris-Sud)
Steven Sperber	School of Mathematics	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Chiung-Jue Sung	Department of Mathematics	National Tsing Hua University
Gang Tian	Department of Mathematics	Princeton University
Ulrike Tillmann	Mathematical Institute	University of Oxford
Victor Turchin	Department of Mathematics	Kansas State University
Jonathan Wahl	Department of Mathematics	University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Adwait Walimbe	Department of Computer Science	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Ke Zhu	Department of Mathematics	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities