This award provides support for the Five Colleges Number Theory Seminar. This is a regular seminar supported by five colleges in the New England area. The seminar provides a center for the research efforts of faculty in the five colleges who are specialists in number theory and arithmetic geometry. It also serves the undergraduate and graduate students at the five colleges who are interested in number theory and arithmetic geometry. This proposal is in the general area of number theory. Number theory has its historical roots in the study of the whole numbers, addressing such questions as those dealing with the divisibility of one whole number by another. It is among the oldest branches of mathematics and was pursued for many centuries for purely aesthetic reasons. However, within the last half century it has become an indispensable tool in diverse applications in areas such as data transmission and processing, and communication systems.
