A three-day international conference, ‘Ramanujan 125,’ to mark the 125th birth anniversary celebration of Srinivasa Ramanujan, began at the University of Florida in the U.S. on Monday.
Organised by Professors Krishnaswami Alladi and Frank Garvan of the University of Florida and Ae Ja Yee of Pennsylvania State University, it has brought together about 70 researchers. They are scheduled to deliver talks on current research influenced by Ramanujan’s work.
The three pre-eminent experts on the mathematical genius — Professors George Andrews (Penn State University), Richard Askey (University of Wisconsin), and Bruce Berndt (University of Illinois) — will be speaking.
The Plenary Talks include presentations by Ken Ono of Emory University, on Ramanujan’s mock theta functions; Robert Vaughan of Pennsylvania State University on the Hardy-Ramanujan-Littlewood circle method; Dorian Goldfeld of Columbia University on Ramanujan sums; and Kannan Soundararajan of Stanford University on zeta and L-functions. Other plenary speakers are Gerald Tenenbaum of the University of Nancy, Kathrin Bringmann of the University of Cologne, Kristian Krattenthaler of the University of Vienna, and Doron Zeilberger of Rutgers.
There are about 40 shorter research presentations.
Over the last two decades, the University of Florida has become a premier centre for research on Ramanujan’s work. Professor Alladi said that just as the conference at the University of Illinois in May 1987 preceded the Ramanujan Centenary in India in December 1987, this event in Florida precedes the 125th anniversary celebrations in India in December 2012.
The conference is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the National Security Agency, and Pennsylvania State University.
Refereed proceedings will be published in the Contemporary Mathematics book series of the American Mathematical Society. It is publishing an article edited by Professor Alladi, ‘Srinivasa Ramanujan - going strong at 125.’ With contributions by eight experts, it will appear in the December 2012 and January 2013 issues of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
