[cmath] CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize Lecture: Bruce Reed on July 18 at PIMS-SFU

[Kiernan, Clare]

----------------------------------------------------
CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize Lecture: Bruce Reed

Bruce Reed, McGill University and the National Institute of Informatics, Japan, will deliver a talk entitled, "Some 21st Century Results in Graph Theory." The lecture will take place on July 18, 2013 at the Simon Fraser University.

Abstract:
A graph is a set of vertices and a set of edges, each of which links a pair of vertices. Thus, graphs may abstractly represent the highways (edges) linking a set of cities (vertices), the bridges linking the islands of an archipelago, or the flights linking airports. However, the use of graphs as models extends far beyond transport networks. The edges can represent bonds between molecules, hyperlinks between webpages, or acquaintanceship in a social network. Indeed, the connections in any network, whether physical or conceptual, can be modeled in this way.

Hilbert in his famous 1900 talk, The Problems of Mathematics, noted: "History teaches the continuity of the development of science. We know that every age has its own problems, which the following age either solves or casts aside as profitless and replaces by new ones."

This is as true in graph theory as in any other area of mathematics. The development of graph theory has been profoundly marked by the advent of the information age. This has led to explosive growth in the size of the networks that can be studied and to the development of techniques that allow us to study huge networks. The talk will briefly survey the changes that have occurred and then focus on a number of quite diverse techniques for handling huge networks, all of which allow us to deduce global properties of a network via an analysis of its local structure.  Examples will include the application of the probabilistic method to graph colouring and of structural decomposition to the theory of graph minors. The talk is aimed at a general audience and no knowledge of graph theory is assumed.

Bio:

Bruce Reed received his degrees in Mathematics and in Computer Science at McGill University. Following postdoctoral fellowships and faculty positions in Europe, Canada and the USA, he joined the faculty of McGill University in 2001: he currently holds the Canada Research Chair in Graph Theory and was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2009. He has played a leading role in a broad range of research areas in discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science. He is best known for his work on areas within graph theory, with many of his most important contributions being in random structures, graph minors, and graph colouring.

July 18, 2013
3:00 pm
Simon Fraser University
SFU-Irmacs Theatre

For more info: http://www.pims.math.ca/scientific-event/130718-cfpplbr
----------------------------------------------------


Clare Kiernan
Communications Manager

Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences
Web: www.pims.math.ca<http://www.pims.math.ca> | Twitter: @pimsmath


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://mail.cms.math.ca/pipermail/cmath/attachments/20130620/f2ba53ed/attachment.htm