Date & Time: Thursday, February 13, 2014, 16:00-17:00.
Venue: Ramanujan Hall
Speaker: Ravi Ramakrishna, Cornell University
Title: Galois Representations
Abstract: In the last 30 years representations of (infinite) Galois groups have played an increasingly important role in number theory. Indeed, arithmetic objects such as the Diophantine equation $y^2=x^3-x^2+1$ or $x^n+y^n=z^n$ often attached Galois representations that `know' the solutions. This talk will survey of a small slice of this theory and will be accessible to mathematicians in all disciplines.