The twelfth meeting of the CNTA is scheduled to take place from June 17-22, 2012 at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. The Canadian Number Theory Association (CNTA) was founded in 1987 at the International Number Theory Conference at Laval University. The purpose of the CNTA is to enhance and promote learning and research in number theory. To advance these goals, the CNTA organizes major international conferences, with the aim of exposing students and researchers to the latest developments in number theory. The direct impact of NSF funding will be the training of a significant number of junior American researchers (graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty), who will gain the opportunity to participate in the conference. Further information for this meeting may be found at www.cs.uleth.ca/~CNTA2012/.
The conference supported by this NSF grant is in the area of number theory, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. Number theorists study questions concerning the fundamental properties of the integers. Although some of these questions may be easily stated, their solutions often employ advanced methods from diverse fields of mathematics. Moreover, theoretical results in number theory have a wide range of applications and have been useful to researchers in cryptography, coding theory, combinatorics, and theoretical physics.
Number theory is one of the oldest branches of mathematics and has been studied for thousands of years. Number theorists study equations concerning fundamental properties of the natural numbers. Many problems in number theory are easily stated, yet their solutions can require advanced methods from diverse fields of mathematics. Theoretical results in number theory have a wide range of applications including coding theory, cryptography, combinatorics, and theoretical physics. This NSF grant provided support for seventeen junior researchers and eight invited speakers to attend the twelfth meeting of the Canadian Number Theory Association Meeting (CNTA), one of the largest international number theory conferences. This conference provided a wonderful opportunity for these junior researchers to interact and exchange ideas with leading experts. Many of the young researchers also had the chance to give lectures on their own research and disseminate their work to a wider audience. The meeting took place in Lethbridge, Alberta from Sunday, June 17, 2012 to Friday, June 22, 2012. This conference gathered 175 participants from North and South America, Europe, and Asia, from all levels including, advanced undergraduates up to senior faculty. The meeting featured a total of 120 lectures (10 plenary lectures, 1 prize lecture, 34 invited lectures, 7 Physics and Number Theory lectures, 1 public lecture, and 67 contributed lectures.) One of the reasons for the high attendance was the exceptional list of plenary and invited speakers. Some of the highlights of the conference included lectures by: Manjul Bhargava (Princeton) on the average rank of Jacobians of hyperelliptic curves, Minhyong Kim (Oxford) on Homotopy Theory and Diophantine Geometry, Akshay Venkatesh (Stanford) on modular forms over quadratic imaginary fields, and Harald Helfgott (CNRS/ENS on the Odd Goldbach Conjecture. There was also an inspiring public lecture given by Andrew Granville (Montreal) on Pattern Hunting in the Primes. Granville's lecture was well attended and attracted members of the local community, including high school students.
