Place
Nicoulau d’Olwer Room, Institute of Catalan Studies
Date
29 November 2018 at 5:00 PM
Talk by Martin Robert Bridson (professor at Oxford University and president of the Clay Mathematical Institute).
Title: Hyperbolic geometry: where battered gems retain their full beauty.
Abstract: Hyperbolic geometry provides a rich setting in which many rigidity phenomena emerge.
In this talk for a general mathematical audience, I shall present several different types of rigidity phenomena, from Mostow’s classical rigidity theorem to generalizations involving the large-scale geometry of groups and spaces.
I shall end by sketching how a newly discovered rigidity phenomenon in hyperbolic geometry can be used to settle an old question concerning the difficulty of identifying an infinite group by studying its actions on finite objects.