Brandeis-Harvard-MIT-Northeastern

JOINT MATHEMATICS COLLOQUIUM


 
Riemannian manifolds of positive curvature

 

Rick Schoen

Stanford University
 
 

MIT

Thursday, May 8, 2008


Talk at 4:30 p.m. in Room 4-237 (NOTE UNUSUAL PLACE)

Tea from 4:00 - 4:30 p.m. in Room 2-290
Refreshments afterwards, in Room 2-290


 
 

Abstract:   We will outline the history and summarize some longstanding conjectures concerning manifolds of positive sectional curvature. We will then describe our recent classification (joint with Simon Brendle) of manifolds with pointwise 1/4-pinched curvature. This proof employs the Ricci flow, but the curvature condition we consider first arose from consideration of the index form for minimal surfaces. We will describe a new strong maximum principle for the Ricci flow which plays an important role in our proof.


 

Home Web page:  Alexandru I. Suciu Comments to:  alexsuciu@neu.edu 
Posted: April 22, 2008    URL: http://www.math.neu.edu/bhmn/schoen08.html