Skip to main content
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences University of Florida

2007–2008 Erdős Colloquium:
Efim Zelmanov

Asymptotic properties of infinite families of finite groups

Efim Zelmanov

Speaker: Fields Medalist Efim Zelmanov, University of California, San Diego
Date and time: Friday, January 25, 2008, 4:00–5:00 p.m.
Location: Little Hall, Room 121
Opening remarks: David Richardson, Associate Dean of Research, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Refreshments: After the lecture, Little Hall, Room 339

Abstract

The talk will focus on algebraic and representation theoretic properties of profinite groups. We will discuss connections with number theory, combinatorics, and low dimensional topology.

About the speaker

Professor Zelmanov, one of the world’s most eminenent mathematicians, specializes in group theory, which is a mathematical study of symmetries. Born and educated in the former Soviet Union, he received his doctorate from the Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk in 1980. His dissertation completely changed the field of Jordan algebras. He then continued to make path breaking contributions to group theory and solved the Restricted Burnside Problem for which he was awarded the Fields Medal, the most prestigious prize in mathematics, in 1994. He moved to the United States in 1990 and has held professorships at Wisconsin, Chicago and Yale, before accepting the Rita Atkinson Endowed Chair in Mathematics at the University of California in San Diego, where he is presently. In 2001, when he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, he was the youngest member in the Academy in the mathematics division.