Principal Investigator: Xianzhe Dai and Rugang Ye
This award provides partial support for the (first) Santa Barbara Summer Conference in Geometry, to be held from July 21 to July 24, 1999 on the campus of University of California, Santa Barbara. The purposes of this conference are threefold. First, to bring together the leading experts in geometry, and especially in the fields closely related to physics. Second, to survey the recent remarkable progress spurred by physics, especially string theory, and point to new directions and frontiers for young researchers, graduate students and postdocs. Third, to further stimulate the fruitful interactions between mathematics and physics in coordination with the program "Geometry and Duality" to be run right after this conference at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, UCSB.
Currently, we are witnessing the blossoming of a golden age of interactions between physics (in particular high energy physics) and mathematics (in particular, differential geometry, differential topology and algebraic geometry). On the one hand, physicists, guided by physical intuitions and equipped with most advanced mathematical tools, bring about new break-throughs which pose new challenging problems and also provide new insights for mathematics. On the other hand, mathematicians, inspired and spurred by advances in physics, make amazing progresses in mathematics, which in turn provide new machineries for physicists. Mathematicians also make direct contributions to physics in collaboration with physicists. The joint efforts of physicists and mathematicians lead to major advances in our understanding of the structures of the universe, and will ultimately uncover major new energy sources and provide new foundations for more powerful natural computations at higher and deeper levels. The Santa Barbara Summer Conference in Geometry is designed to make contributions in the framework of these developments.
