Tuesday May 7th, 2024 | |
| Time: | 2:15 PM - 3:30 PM |
| Title: | Lecture 1: Unplanned consequences of the Ribe program, part I: Introduction |
| Speaker: | Assaf Naor, Princeton University |
| Location: | SCGP Auditorium 103 |
| Abstract: | |
| Almost 50 years ago, Martin Ribe proved a remarkable geometric rigidity theorem for normed spaces. This inspired an intricate web of conjectures and analogies that aims to transfer phenomena, concepts and intuitions from the structured realm of linear spaces to the seemingly uncontrollably diverse world of general metric spaces. While research on this program has led to powerful, creative and deep discoveries, numerous mysteries remain. These talks will start by introducing the audience to the aforementioned research endeavor, which is known today as the “Ribe program,†assuming no prior knowledge of it. This program naturally enhanced our understanding of the structure of normed spaces, and we will indeed present examples of this, but our main focus will quickly shift to describing some of its unplanned applications. Namely, we will demonstrate how it informs us about objects that are further afield, such as groups, curvature, algorithms and probability. | |