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					Raoul Bott Visit: The month of February 2002 Weekly Lectures Series: Tuesdays and Thursdays in February Time & Location: 1 pm - 2 pm in MS 6627 Colloquium Talk: February 14, 2002 4:00 p.m. in MS 6627 Lecture Series Title : Remembrance of Things Past Abstract : The first four lectures will deal with the period 1949 to 1959 and this hopefully will serve as an introduction to both the Morse theory and the topology of Lie groups. The goal of these lectures will be the Morse theoretic proof of the periodicity theorem for the homotopy of the classical groups. The second half of the course will deal with the equivariant Morse Theory and in particular its application to the cohomology of the space of flat bundles over Riemann surfaces, as well as some of the relations of these topics to Physics. Professor Bott will present these subjects in their historical and personal context. Colloquium Title : Configuration Spaces and Imbedding Invariants Time and Location: February 14, 2002 4:00 p.m. in MS 6627   Background on Professor Bott: Raoul Bott started his academic studies as an electrical engineer but during the course of a fantastic career, evolved into one of the great mathematicians of the second half of the twentieth century. His work is at the very heart of most of the major advances in geometry and topology in the last fifty years. His contributions including homogeneous vector bundles, Borel--Weil--Bott theorem, Morse theory, Bott periodicity, Yang-Mills equations on Riemann surfaces and the topology of moduli spaces of vector bundles on curves, and so on, just to name a few, have energized an entire generation of mathematicians. In addition, his wonderful style of lecturing has brought the creative experience of doing and understanding mathematics to enormous numbers of students and professional mathematicians alike. Bott was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1987, the Steele Career Prize of the American Mathematical Society in 1990, and the Wolf Prize in Mathematics in 2000. He has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1964 and the French Academy of Sciences since 1995. He has also received numerous honorary doctorate degrees and other honors and prizes. To gain some perspective on Bott's life and works, one of the best sources is the marvelous article, The Life and Works of Raoul Bott written by Loring W. Tu which will appear in a special volume on the works of Atiyah, Singer, Bott, Hirzebruch to be published by the International Press. Related Web References: The Life and Works of Raoul Bott by Loring W. Tu, Biography of Raoul Bott followed by a 25-page discussion of his major papers. Interview with Raoul Bott, (PDF file) Notices of the AMS, April 2001 Bott Wins Israel's Wolf Foundation Prize in Mathematics, Harvard University Gazette Bott and Serre Share 2000 Wolf Prize, (PDF file) Notices of the AMS, May 2000 Configuration space invariants of knots and 3-manifolds, MSRI Professor Bott's lecture series in February is supported by a generous grant from the Gill Foundation. Photo of Raoul Bott displayed with permission from the Harvard University News Office.
					Previous speakers of the DLS include: Gilles Pisier, Gregg Zuckerman, and Freydoon Shahidi, Alain Connes, Jöran Friberg, David Mumford, Sir Michael Atiyah, Jean-Michel Bismut, Jean-Pierre Serre, G. Tian, N. Sibony, and C. Deninger. Dept. Information, Directions, and Parking Details | Picture Credits For questions or comments please contact webmaster@math.ucla.edu http://www.math.ucla.edu/dls