ABELPRIZE LECTURES BERGEN
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The Abel Prize Laureates 2015
John F. Nash Jr. and Louis Nirenberg
visit University of Bergen.
TIME: Thursday May 21, 14:00 - 16:00
PLACE: VilVite Auditorium, Thormøhlensgate 51.
PROGRAM:
Introduction:
Rector Dag Rune Olsen, Universitetet i Bergen
John F. Nash Jr., Princeton University
Louis Nirenberg, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
Science Lecture: Camillo De Lellis, University of Zürich:
Part 1: "Surely you're joking, Mr. Nash?”
Part 2: “Exploring the unknown, the work of Louis Nirenberg on Partial Differential Equations”
About the prize winners:
John F. Nash, Jr. of Princeton University and Louis Nirenberg of New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences share the Abel prize 2015
“for striking and seminal contributions to the theory of nonlinear partial differential equations and its applications to geometric analysis.”
Partial differential equations (PDEs) are equations involving rates of change that originally arose to describe physical phenomena but, as they showed, are also helpful in analysing abstract geometrical objects.
In the 1950s Nash proved important theorems about PDEs, which are considered by his peers to be his deepest work. Outside mathematics, however, Nash is best known for a paper he wrote about game theory, the mathematics of decisionmaking, which ultimately won him the 1994 Nobel Prize for economics, and which features strongly in the 2001 film about him, A Beautiful Mind.
Nirenberg, with his fundamental embedding theorems for the sphere, solved the classical problems of Minkowski and Weyl. Nirenberg has had one of the longest and most feted careers in mathematics, having produced important results right up until his 70s. Besides being towering figures, as individuals, in the analysis of PDEs, Nash and Nirenberg influenced each other through their contributions and interactions. Far from being confined to the solutions of the problems for which they were devised, the results proved by Nash and Nirenberg have become very useful tools and have found tremendous applications in further contexts. Among the most popular of these tools are the interpolation inequalities due to Nirenberg.