Speaker

:

Prof. R.Sujatha

Affiliation

:

School of Mathematics,
TIFR,  Bombay
 

Subject Area

:

Mathematics

Venue

:

Lecture Hall III, Dept of Mathematics

Time

:

4.00 pm

Date  

:

Friday, 27th January,2006

Event Title1

:

 " On the Milnor Conjectures"

The Milnor conjectures were formulated in the 1970’s in a seminal paper by John Milnor.  These conjectures link three seemingly unrelated groups via specific maps between them. Important progress was made in the 1980’s by Suslin, Merkurjev, etc. but the conjectures themselves in their entirety seemed elusive.  In the 1990’s, work of Vladimir Voevodsky provided new techniques which finally enabled him to give a complete proof of these conjectures, thereby also earning him the Fields Medal.  In this talk, we shall outline the conjectures, the history and some aspects of Voevodsky’s work.