Back to Departmental Colloquium: Fall 2024
Departmental Colloquium
Date: Thursday, Sep 19, 2024
Time: 4:00PM - 5:00PM
Location: JWB 335
Aaron J. Bertram
University of Utah
Title |
Three is a Crowd: A Benjamin Button Colloquium |
Abstract |
Three is harder than two, and not just when dealing with human beings and celestial bodies. The complexity increases dramatically when we pass from line segments (two-gons) to triangles, from circles (bivalent graphs) to trivalent graphs and from quadratic forms to cubic forms on a complex vector space. While I want to focus on the last of these, pointing out the relationships between cubic forms and lattices, Gorenstein rings and “K3-categories”, there is also rich mathematics in trivalent graphs and polygons that I might lead with in a standard colloquium talk. Instead I want to “Benjamin Button” this colloquium, starting with the more advanced mathematics first and working backward to an amusing ending/beginning. |
Algebraic Geometry