Distinguished Lectures
Distinguished Lectures are delivered by outstanding scientists and academicians. They bring to the centre their vision and their pathbreaking research.
Upcoming Lectures
Vector bundles and Galois representations
Jean-Marc Fontaine (Université de Paris-Sud, France)
27 November 2018, 16:00 to 18:00
Madhava Lecture Hall, ICTS, Bangalore
After a short description of the perfectoid fields introduced by Peter Scholze, I will explain my construction with Laurent Fargues of a « curve » X_F associated to a perfectoid field F. This curve is defined over the field Q_p of p-adic numbers. It is not algebraic but is « complete » meaning that...more
Past Lectures
From bits to qubits: a quantum leap for computers
Susan Coppersmith (University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin)
26 September 2018, 16:00 to 17:00
Ramanujan Lecture Hall, ICTS Bangalore
The steady increase in computational power of information processors over the past half-century has led to smart phones and the internet, changing commerce and our social lives. Up to now, the primary way that computational power has increased is that the electronic components have been made...more
Mysteries of the Higgs Boson
Michael E. Peskin (SLAC, Stanford University)
17 April 2018, 16:00 to 17:30
Ramanujan Lecture Hall, ICTS Bangalore
Thirty-five years after it was postulated as a key component of the theory of weak interactions, the Higgs boson was discovered at the CERN Large Hadron Collider in 2012. Since that time, many decay modes of the Higgs boson have been observed, indicating couplings of the Higgs boson in good accord...more
Symmetry in Quantum Gravity
Hirosi Ooguri (Fred Kavli Professor of Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, Director of the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, Caltech; Principal Investigator, Kavli IPMU, The University of Tokyo and President, Aspen Center for Physics)
15 January 2018, 16:00 to 17:30
Ramanujan Lecture Hall, ICTS Bangalore
General relativity and quantum mechanics were crowning achievements of physics in the 20th century, and their unification has been left as our homework in the 21st century. Superstring theory is our best candidate for the unification. Although predictions of the theory are typically at extremely...more
The SYK Model (Kavli Distinguished Lecture)
David Gross (KITP - University of California, Santa Barbara)
08 January 2018, 09:00 to 10:30
Ramanujan Lecture Hall, ICTS, Bengaluru
Abstract : A perspective on large N theories: their role in quantum field theory, in gauge-gravity dualities and an introduction to the SYK model. This lecture is a part of Kavli Asian Winter School (KAWS) on Strings, Particles and Cosmology 2018more
Geometry and Arithmetic of Calabi-Yau Manifolds
Philip Candelas FRS (Rouse-Ball Professor of Mathematics, Mathematical Institute, Univ. of Oxford, UK)
07 April 2017, 16:00 to 17:00
Ramanujan Lecture Hall, ICTS, Bangalore
Calabi-Yau manifolds play an important role in physics owing to the part they play in passing from a 10-dimensional string theory vacuum to the observed world of four dimensions. The process of calculating the four - dimensional quantities usually involves a calculation of certain period integrals...more
What is Science?
Pierre Hohenberg (New York University)
28 December 2016, 16:00 to 17:00
ICTS campus, Bengaluru
In this talk we propose a new definition of science based on the distinction between the activity of scientists and the product of that activity: the former is denoted (lower-case) science and the latter (upper-case) Science. These definitions are intended to clarify the nature of scientific...more
Moduli of vector bundles on compact Riemann surfaces
M.S.Narasimhan (NMI, Indian Institute of Science and TIFR-CAM, Bangalore)
20 December 2016, 16:00 to 17:00
Ramanujan Lecture Hall, ICTS, Bangalore
The theory of holomorphic vector bundles on a compact Riemann surface is a vast "non-abelian" generalisation of the classical theory of the Jacobian variety. The Jacobian, a complex torus, arose in the work of Abel, Jacobi and Riemann on abelian integrals on compact Riemann surfaces. The non-...more
Special Session: 100 Years of General Relativity
François Bouchet, David Gross, Juan Maldacena, Peter Saulson and Edward Witten (.)
26 June 2015, 14:00 to 15:00
Faculty hall, IISc Campus, Bangalore
The GR session has been planned to commemorate and celebrate 100 years of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity on the afternoon of Friday, 26th June, 2015 at the Faculty Hall, Indian Institute of Science Campus, Bengaluru. This special session will be chaired by Prof. Gary Horowitz, University...more
Age of Networks
Jennifer Tour Chayes (Microsoft Research New England and Microsoft Research New York City)
21 January 2015, 16:00 to 17:00
Faculty hall, IISc, Bangalore
Everywhere we turn these days, we find that networks can be used to describe relevant interactions.In the high tech world, we see the Internet, the World Wide Web, mobile phone networks, and a variety of online social networks.In economics, we are increasingly experiencing both the positive and...more
Square Values of Mathematical Expressions, from Ancient Times to the Modern Day
Manjul Bhargava (Princeton University)
19 January 2015, 16:00 to 17:00
Homi Bhabha Auditorium, TIFR, Mumbai
Understanding whether (and how often) a mathematical expression takes a square value is a problem that has fascinated mathematicians since antiquity. In this lecture a survey of this problem, starting from its independent origins in many cultures in ancient times to some of the major advances of...more

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