20th Annual Owens Lecture
William Fulton
160 Years of Enumerative Geometry
Wednesday, April 13, 2011, 3pm
131 State Hall
William Fulton
William Fulton received his doctorate in 1966 from
Princeton University where he studied with John Milnor,
John Moore, Goro Shimura, and Gerald Washnitzer. He
then held a postdoctoral position at Brandeis University.
In 1970 he joined the faculty at Brown University, his
undergraduate alma mater. He became Charles L.
Hutchinson Distinguished Service Professor at the
University of Chicago in 1987. He came to the University
of Michigan in 1998 as the Miner Keeler Chair in
Mathematics, and in 2009 he became the Oscar Zariski
Distinguished University Professor there. An algebraic
geometer, he is particularly noted for his work in
intersection theory.
Professor Fulton received the Leroy P. Steele Prize for
Mathematical Exposition in 1996 from the American
Mathematical Society. In 2010, the AMS awarded him the
Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement. He is a
member of the National Academy of Sciences and the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a
foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences.
Abstract
Enumerative geometry can be dated from Steiner's
question in 1848: How many plane conics are tangent to
five given conics? The subject flourished in the last half of
the 19th century, especially in the hands of Schubert,
although it had no rigorous foundations. Indeed, Hilbert's
fifteenth problem asked for a justification. Topology and
intersection theory were instrumental in attacking this
problem in the mid 20th century. Recently enumerative
geometry has been revitalized by ideas from physics and
from equivariant cohomology. The talk, aimed at a very
general audience, will sketch some of this history.
Owens Lecture
The Owens Lecture is named for the late Owen G. Owens,
a former Professor of Mathematics at Wayne State
University. The Lecture is supported by the Owens Fund,
which was established by Professor Owens’s family.
Previous
speakers
have
included
eminent
mathematicians from around the world representing a
wide array of interests.
D Department of Mathematics H
http://www.math.wayne.edu