Chow Lectures 2023

This year's speaker for the Chow lectures is June Huh (Princeton University).

June Huh is mainly known for solving long-standing conjectures in combinatorics and discrete geometry using and extending ideas from algebraic geometry. Among his fundamental achievements are solutions of the Heron-Rota-Welsh conjecture for matroids (together with Karim Adiprasito and Eric Katz), of the Dowling-Wilson top-heavy conjecture for projective geometries (together with Botong Wang), and the development of the theory of Lorentzian polynomials (together with Petter Brändén). His many distinctions include a Clay Research Fellowship, the New Horizons in Mathematics Prize, and the Fields Medal in 2022.

At the Chow lectures he will give an overview of recent developments in the theory of Lorentzian polynomials, starting from his initial work with Petter Brändén and covering some more recent works of Aluffi, Brändén-Leake, Chan-Pak, Hu-Xiao, Ross, Ross-Süß-Wannerer, and others.

The lectures will be accompanied by talks and exercise sessions lead by Chris Eur, Sofía Garzón, Alheydis Geiger, Shiyue Li and Jacob Matherne, as well as a historical talk by Norbert Schappacher.

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 such as postdoctoral researchers and PhD students. Applicants are expected to submit a brief academic CV and a motivation letter or an article on a related topic for evaluation. Further instructions on the funding application follow in the confirmation of registration.