The Department of Mathematics is pleased to announce the 2024-2025 Ramanujan Colloquium, featuring Jeffrey C. Lagarias, the Harold Mead Stark Distinguished Professor at the University of Michigan. The colloquium will take place on Wednesday, March 5, 2025, from 4:05-4:55 PM in Little Hall 113, with opening remarks by Mary Watt, Interim Dean of CLAS. Refreshments will be served at 3:30 PM in Little Hall 339.
Colloquium Talk: “Euler’s Constant: Euler’s Work and Modern Developments”
The first part of the talk surveys Euler’s work on his constant gamma = 0.57721… and related constants, starting from 1731. It has a cousin, the Euler-Gompertz constant, delta = 0.59634… which will put in a guest appearance. The second part reviews a selection of subsequent developments from the following 300 years, which exhibit its appearance in many fields of mathematics. This mysterious constant is conjectured to be transcendental, but it is not even known to be irrational. It appears in many striking analytic formulae; some were contributed by Ramanujan. The problem of computing it was raised in Turing’s 1937 paper defining Turing machines. This constant has a particularly strong and elusive relation to prime number theory and the Riemann hypothesis. In a certain sense it knows (something) about every individual prime.
Additional Seminar Talks by Professor Lagarias
In addition to the colloquium, Professor Lagarias will deliver two more talks:
- Number Theory Seminar: The Collatz Problem – Tuesday, March 4, 1:55 PM, Little Hall 339
- Combinatorics Seminar: Generalized Factorials – Tuesday, March 4, 3:00 PM, Little Hall 225
About the Speaker
Jeffrey Lagarias is the Harold Mead Stark Distinguished Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He received his PhD in 1974 from MIT in algebraic number theory, and joined AT&T Bell Labs, where he worked on a variety of problems in pure and applied math. He joined the University of Michigan in 2003. Professor Lagarias has made fundamental contributions to several fields, including number theory, harmonic analysis, ergodic theory, low-dimensional topology, and theoretical computer science. In recognition of his distinguished contributions, he was elected a Member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2024.
About Ramanujan
Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920), a self-taught genius from South India, dazzled mathematicians at Cambridge University by communicating bewildering formulae in a series of letters. G. H. Hardy invited Ramanujan to work with him at Cambridge, convinced that Ramanujan was a “Newton of the East”! Ramanujan’s work has had a profound and wide impact within and outside mathematics. He is considered one of the greatest mathematicians in history.
About the Sponsor
The Ramanujan Colloquium is made possible through the generous support of George Andrews, the Atherton Professor at The Pennsylvania State University. Professor Andrews is the world’s leading authority on the theory of partitions and the work of Srinivasa Ramanujan. A Member of the National Academy of Sciences, he has strong ties to the UF Mathematics Department, which boasts one of the strongest programs in mathematics related to Ramanujan’s work. He received an Honorary Doctorate from UF in December 2002. Since 2005, he has served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Mathematics Department each Spring term. Additionally, he was President of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) from 2008 to 2009.
We invite faculty, students, and guests to join us for this exciting event celebrating the legacy of Ramanujan and the ongoing contributions of Professor Jeffrey Lagarias.