IISER Pune is pleased to announce:
Public Lecture by Eminent Mathematician:
Prof. Wilfried Schmid
(Dwight Parker Robinson Chair Professor, Harvard University)
Date: January 12, 2018
Time: 6:30 pm
Venue: Sir C. V. Raman Auditorium, Lecture Hall Complex, IISER Pune
Title: Riemann's "nowhere differentiable" continuous function
Abstract: According to second hand reports, Riemann once presented an explicit example of a continuous, nowhere differentiable function. Various mathematicians tried to prove the non-differentiability, but the matter was not completely settled until 1971. In fact, Riemann's function is differentiable at certain rational points, after all. Although this was regarded as a problem in real analysis, the most transparent proof of non-differentiability uses the connection of Riemann's function to a particular modular form. I shall show that Riemann's function is but one example of huge class of continuous functions arising from modular forms and Maass forms, all of which are non-differentiable at most points, and some, in fact, nowhere differentiable. All of these functions exhibit remarkable fractal behavior. This is joint work with Steve Miller.
About the speaker: Prof. Schmid is a Dwight Parker Robinson Chair Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University. He has made fundamental contributions to several areas of mathematics, particularly in Hodge Theory, Representation Theory and Automorphic Forms. His public lecture should be accessible to anybody with a basic knowledge of calculus.
Besides this public lecture, Prof. Schmid will also be giving a talk on mathematics education on January 13.
