A conference in honor of Ernie Shult will be held at Kansas State University, from March 22 through March 25, 2001. The conference will involve approximately thirty talks on those parts of algebra and geometry to which Professor Shult has made significant contributions in a long and distinguished career. Thus, the conference will be concerned with developments in the theory of finite simple groups, with geometries related to those groups, and with generalizations of such geometries.
Group theory can be described as the algebra associated with symmetry, and finite groups in particular afford a rich mathematical structure and wealth of applications. The finite simple groups may be viewed as the "atoms" of which all finite groups are composed, and for this reason, the announcement, twenty years ago, of the classification of the finite simple groups was a milestone in mathematics. The conference will focus on developments which promise to provide, perhaps for the first time, a satisfactory treatment of this fundamental result. The interplay between geometry and group theory has always been enriching for both subjects and will provide a second focus for this conference.
