Colloquium: Roger Howe

Place: Parker Hall 249 (reception at 3:30 in Parker Hall 244)

Speaker: Roger Howe, Yale University

Title: Four stages of classical invariant theory

Abstract: "Classical" invariant theory, as described by Hermann Weyl in his book, The Classical Groups, has seen very substantial progress since Weyl wrote. This talk will survey four stages of development in the theory, of which the fourth stage is currently unfolding. A key role is played by the Weyl algebra, which was introduced by Weyl in his discussions of quantum mechanics, but not used by him in invariant theory. The main ideas used are from representation theory, The talk will include a summary of relevant notions from representation theory.

Faculty host: Huajun Huang