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Back to Departmental Colloquium: Fall 2012

Departmental Colloquium


Date: Thursday, Nov 15, 2012

Time: 4:15PM

Location: JWB 335


Dieter Kotschick

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Title

Characteristic numbers of algebraic varieties

Abstract

The Hirzebruch-Riemann-Roch theorem implies certain relations between the Hodge and Chern numbers of a complex projective variety. After proving his theorem in 1953, Hirzebruch formulated several natural problems about these characteristic numbers. For example, he asked to what extent the Hodge and Chern numbers are topological invariants of the underlying manifold. I will explain the answer to this question obtained in recent joint work with S. Schreieder. Along the way we proved that the Hirzebruch-Riemann-Roch relations are the only universal relations between Hodge and Chern numbers, and we gained some understanding of the collections of Hodge numbers for arbitrary compact Kähler manifolds.

Algebraic Geometry Topology

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