Chow Lectures 2025 by Nima Arkani-Hamed
Geometry and Combinatorics of Scattering Amplitudes
This year's speaker for the Chow lectures is Nima Arkani-Hamed (IAS Princeton). Nima Arkani-Hamed is a theoretical physicist, mostly known for his groundbreaking contributions to the theory of scattering amplitudes. One of his key achievements is the introduction of the amplituhedron (with Jaroslav Trnka) and other geometric structures which simplify calculations for particle interactions in certain quantum field theories. Nima is Gopal Prasad Professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey, USA. His work has been recognized by many awards, including the Gribov medal of the European Physical Society (2003), the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2012) and the Sakurai Prize of the American Physical Society (2021).
This lecture series is named after Wei-Liang Chow (October 1, 1911, Shanghai – August 10, 1995, Baltimore), who was a celebrated mathematician best known for his work in algebraic geometry, though he also made important contributions to other areas such as differential geometry, differential equations, and control theory. Within algebraic geometry he is known among other things for his work on intersection theory (Chow's moving lemma, Chow ring), for Chow's theorem on algebraicity of projective analytic varieties, and for many other achievements.
Chow was born in Shanghai, had his school education in the United States, and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1931. He obtained his PhD in Leipzig in 1936, where he worked with van der Waerden (who was a professor at the University of Leipzig), introducing in particular Chow coordinates. Subsequently, Chow was a professor in Nanjing, Princeton and at Johns Hopkins University were he worked until 1977.
The idea behind the Chow lectures is to give students the opportunity to enjoy lectures by internationally renowned experts on active fields of modern mathematics and to create a stimulating research environment.
Limited travel funding can be provided for early-career participants presenting a poster. Applicants are expected to submit title and abstract of their poster through the registration form by Friday, 18th of July. (The form can be changed after the initial registration for the conference.) Decisions on the poster and funding applications are communicated in August.
This activity is financially supported by the ERC Synergy Grant UNIVERSE+ www.positive-geometry.com, funded by the European Union (ERC, UNIVERSE PLUS, 101118787). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
