Pasquale Porcelli Lecture Series

The Pasquale Porcelli Lecture Series in mathematics is an annual event in which a prominent mathematician is invited to deliver a series of three lectures on recent advances in an area of mathematical research. The topics and the level of the lectures are carefully chosen to appeal to a broad audience from various academic disciplines. Everyone is invited to attend!

The Lecture Series is funded by the family of Pasquale Porcelli, who was a mathematics professor at LSU from 1959 until his death in 1972. Porcelli was made Boyd Professor-the highest LSU rank-in 1965. Two of Porcelli's LSU doctoral students became Sloan fellows after graduating from LSU.

The past speakers at the Lecture Series include

• (1980) Ronald L. Graham, Bell Telephone Laboratories
• (1981) Paul H. Rabinowitz, University of Wisconsin
• (1982) T.Y. Lam, University of California at Berkeley
• (1983) Thomas Hawkins, Boston University
• (1984) John Milnor, Institute for Advanced Studies
• (1985) H.W. Lenstra Jr., University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
• (1986) Kiyosi Ito, Kyoto University, Japan
• (1987) Winfried Scharlau, University of Münster, Germany
• (1989) Heinz-Otto Peitgen, University of California at Santa Cruz
• (1995) Louis H. Kauffman, University of Illinois at Chicago
• (1997) Avner Friedman, University of Minnesota
• (1998) Carl Pomerance, University of Georgia at Athens
• (2000) Dominic Welsh, Oxford University, England
• (2001) Martin Golubitsky, University of Houston

This year's speaker is going to be Professor Vaughan Jones of Jones polynomial fame. He was born in New Zealand in 1952, and earned a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Geneva in 1979. He has been Professor of Mathematics at UC Berkeley since 1985, and has held a Sloan fellowship and a Guggenheim fellowship. He was awarded the Fields Medal-the mathematics equivalent of a Nobel Prize-in 1990. In 1999 he was elected to membership in the US National Academy of Sciences.

Professor Jones will give the following three lectures:

Subfactors and Numbers

Tuesday, March 25, 2003, 3:30-4:30, B16 Lockett Hall

The need to solve equations has driven the development of new number systems from fractions all the way to von Neumann algebras. The simplest extensions of von Neumann algebras are subfactors which exhibit a surprising mixture of discrete and continuous behaviour. If this all sounds like mumbo jumbo, come to the first lecture to have all mysteries revealed.

Subfactors and Topology

Wednesday, March 26, 2003, 3:30-4:30, B16 Lockett Hall

By extending von Neumann algebras one stumbles upon braids, knots and ever more complicated three-dimensional spaces. This unlikely return from infinite to finite dimensions poses more questions than it answers.

Subfactors and Physics

Thursday, March 27, 2003, 3:30-4:30, B16 Lockett Hall

What von Neumann really invented his algebras for was to help understand quantum theory. Subfactors make contact with physics in two apparently unrelated ways-by mimicking the structure of lattice models in statistical mechanics and by providing exotic "statistics" in low-dimensional quantum field theory. Need I say more?