The Johns Hopkins University Department of Mathematics, together with the Japan-U.S. Mathematics Institute (JAMI), will hold a conference and workshop in March 2005 under the title "Hodge Theory and Logarithmic Geometry". It will be organized by the Principal Investigator and three mathematicians from Japan.
Hodge theory has emerged in the past twenty years or so as a recognized field of mathematics. It will be the main focus of the conference. Each aspect of Hodge theory has interface with one or more of the following diverse areas of mathematics: algebraic and complex geometry, automorphic forms, differential geometry, functional analysis, homological algebra, mathematical physics, and number theory.
Logarithmic geometry is a somewhat recent notion that treats, in a unified way, certain notions of "going to infinity" in a space. It has been used successfully by Kato and Usui to attach a boundary to the classifying spaces for Hodge structures, a problem that had been around for some thirty years. It seems to be the right time to draw more attention to the increasing role of logarithmic geometry in Hodge-theoretical situations. That is intended, however, without constricting the scope of the conference.
