2025 Terry Wall Lecture - Connections via Chains of Random Loops
4:00pm - 5:00pm /
Thursday 1st May 2025
/ Venue: Lecture Theatre B Central Teaching Hub
- Dr. Alice Rizzardo
- Suitable for: The lecture is aimed at a broad scientific audience, and undergraduate students are particularly welcome.
- Admission: FREE
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2025 Terry Wall Lecture - Connections via Chains of Random Loops with guest speaker, Professor Wendelin Werner.
Abstract: I will describe a simple mathematical objects related to basic physics. It is a cloud of independent random Brownian loops that can be thought of as appearing spontaneously in space or on a graph. For reasons that I will try to explain, the object of study are the connections that can be created by chains of intersecting loops. We will describe a new -- possibly surprising -- identity that allows to give an alternative exact description of the picture when one observes that two given points are connected, and we will discuss why this is of interest.
Wendelin Werner FRS is the Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. He received his PhD in 1993 from the Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, under the supervision of Jean-François Le Gall.
The work of Prof. Werner has been fundamental to our understanding of random processes. It connects areas of mathematics such as statistical physics and complex analysis, and sheds light on the fascinating interplay between randomness and continuity. He has made crucial contributions to our understanding of critical phenomena: these describe the behavior of a physical system as it approaches a phase transition, for example water changing from being a liquid to being a gas when heated. Among other major accomplishments, Prof. Werner‘s study of the Schramm-Lower evolution lead to fundamental results in the study of percolation theory and Brownian motion.
Prof. Werner was awarded the Fields medal in 2006. He has received many other honours and accolades, including the Fermat Prize in 2001, the Pólya Prize in 2006, and the Heinz Gumin Prize in 2016. He was elected a Fellow to the Royal Society in 2020.
Tea and coffee outside the lecture theatre starting at 3:30pm. Refreshments after the lecture.
Professor Terry Wall FRS, emeritus Professor at the University of Liverpool and former President of the London Mathematical Society.
Abstract: I will describe a simple mathematical objects related to basic physics. It is a cloud of independent random Brownian loops that can be thought of as appearing spontaneously in space or on a graph. For reasons that I will try to explain, the object of study are the connections that can be created by chains of intersecting loops. We will describe a new -- possibly surprising -- identity that allows to give an alternative exact description of the picture when one observes that two given points are connected, and we will discuss why this is of interest.
Wendelin Werner FRS is the Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. He received his PhD in 1993 from the Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, under the supervision of Jean-François Le Gall.
The work of Prof. Werner has been fundamental to our understanding of random processes. It connects areas of mathematics such as statistical physics and complex analysis, and sheds light on the fascinating interplay between randomness and continuity. He has made crucial contributions to our understanding of critical phenomena: these describe the behavior of a physical system as it approaches a phase transition, for example water changing from being a liquid to being a gas when heated. Among other major accomplishments, Prof. Werner‘s study of the Schramm-Lower evolution lead to fundamental results in the study of percolation theory and Brownian motion.
Prof. Werner was awarded the Fields medal in 2006. He has received many other honours and accolades, including the Fermat Prize in 2001, the Pólya Prize in 2006, and the Heinz Gumin Prize in 2016. He was elected a Fellow to the Royal Society in 2020.
Tea and coffee outside the lecture theatre starting at 3:30pm. Refreshments after the lecture.
Professor Terry Wall FRS, emeritus Professor at the University of Liverpool and former President of the London Mathematical Society.