M. Ram Murty (Queen’s University)

Math Club

Thursday, January 25th, 2024

Time: 5:30 p.m.  Place: Jeffery Hall, Room 118

Speaker: M. Ram Murty (Queen’s University)

Title: The century of elliptic curves

Abstract: Twentieth century number theory was definitely THE century of elliptic curves. Beginning with the celebrated theorem of Mordell in 1922 on the finite generation of of the group of rational points of an elliptic curve over Q, the arithmetic theory of elliptic curves had an exponential growth culminating in the solutions of Fermat's Last Theorem, Ramanujan conjectures, Mordell's conjecture and the Sato-Tate conjecture, to name a few. We will give a retrospective survey of these developments and indicate possible future directions of the theory, especially with regard to the (still open) ABC conjecture.