A four day conference entitled "Geometry and Arithmetic" will be held during the period of October 17, 18, 19 and 20, 2005, at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. The conference will be wide ranging in subject matter, including talks in algebraic geometry, number theory, automorphic forms, and representation theory. All of these fields were influenced by the new techniques introduced by Deligne and Grothendieck (such as etale cohomology, motives, sheaf theoretic methods for both coherent sheaves and constructible sheaves, the derived category, mixed Hodge theory). The aim of the conference is to allow mathematicians from these fields to interact with each other in a constructive manner.
Beginning in the 1960's, a powerful collection of new ideas emerged in Paris, developed by the mathematicians Pierre Deligne and Alexander Grothendieck. These ideas grew from algebraic geometry, a field that was then somewhat arcane and isolated from the rest of mathematics. The Deligne-Grothendieck ideas were so powerful and wide reaching that, in the years since their inception, they have found essential applications in very different areas, such as number theory (the study of equations involving whole numbers) and group theory (the study of symmetries). They have played a major unifying role in mathematics. Now, Deligne has moved to the United States and we hope that this conference, celebrating his achievements, will contribute in its own small way to unifying mathematics
