Stephen S. Kudla (University of Maryland) Freydoon Shahidi (Purdue University)
This project will provide support allowing young researchers from the US mathematical community to benefit from participation in the special program at the Institute Henri Poincare (IHP) in Paris in the spring semester 2000. This program focuses on two topics: (i) Shimura varieties and the trace formula and (ii) congruences and Galois representations. These topics, and particularly their interaction, will certainly be at the center of much of the research activity in automorphic forms and number theory in the opening decades of the 21st century. The activity at IHP will bring together the world leaders in these areas. The program will center around a series of lecture `courses' covering the latest developments concering the trace formula, endoscopy, the fundamental lemma, L functions for Shimura varieties, global and local Langlands functoriality, Galois representations, p-adic Hecke algebras, p-adic modular forms, rigid analysis, the local Langlands correspondence and the geometric Langlands correspondence. The scope of the program encourages new directions for research at the interface of the two major fields and participation will provide young researchers a unique opportunity to develop expertise in this important area at an early stage in their careers.
Two major developments in mathematics in the later part of the 20th century are the Langlands program in automorphic forms/representation theory and the Wiles and Taylor-Wiles proof of Fermat's Last Theorem and the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture. These advances, relating number theory and geometry, are in fact very closely linked, and a vigorous development of the union of the techniques from the two areas is currently taking place. The resulting field will be one of the main arenas of research activity in mathematics in the first decades of the 21st century. The research program taking place at the Institute Henri Poincare in Paris in the spring semester 2000 and centered around lecture courses by the world leaders provides an unparalleled level of vision and insight. This NSF Grant award will provide funding for young researchers from the US mathematical commmunity to participate in the IHP program, and hence will help to ensure a strong level of US expertise in these new developments in number theory.
This award is being supported by the Division of Mathematical Sciences (Algebra and Number Theort program), the Divison of International Programs (Western Europe Program), and the Office of Multidisciplinary Activities of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate .
