The Clifford Lectures

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Upcoming Lectures!

2007-2008 Clifford Lectures, March 12-16, 2008

 

2008-2009 Clifford Lectures, November 12-15, 2008

Read about Past Years.

Alfred Hoblitzelle Clifford

Alfred Hoblitzelle Clifford was an analyst by training but soon became interested in ordered semigroups and eventually in semigroups in general. He is best known for his work on this subject, which is among the most penetrating and insightful. His book, The Algebraic Theory of Semigroups, vol. 1 (1961), vol. 2 (1967), with G.B. Preston, became the first and foremost text on the subject in the West.

Alfred Clifford joined Tulane University in 1955 as head of the Mathematics Department at Newcomb College until its merger with the Arts and Sciences Mathematics Department. In the early 1980's Alfred Clifford made a generous donation to the Department, the income from which has been used to organize an annual Lecture series. Two years after his death in 1992 a special conference on semigroups was held in his memory.

The lectures

Since 1984 the Mathematics Department at Tulane University has held the annual Clifford Lectures, a week-long series of talks by a distinguished mathematician. A mini-conference is held in conjunction with each of the Clifford Lecture series. A unique feature of the conference is that the other invited speakers are selected by the Clifford Lecturer. Past Clifford Lecturers have included Field Medalists, members of the National Academy of Sciences and many other distinguished scientists. The complete list is below.

The lecturers

Year Clifford Lecturer University Title
1984 Charles Fefferman Princeton University “The Uncertainty Principle”
1985 *S. T. Yau University of California, San Diego “Function Theory on Complete Manifolds with Non-negative Ricci Eurvature”
1986 *William Thurston Princeton University “Three Dimensional manifolds”
1987 Saharon Shelah Hebrew University “Non-structure Theory: How to Build Many Complicated Structures”
1988 Clifford Taubes Harvard “Moduli Spaces and Mapping Spaces: Topology and P.D.E.”
1989 Charles Peskin Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences “Mathematical Biology”
1990 Haim Brezis Université de Paris VI “Liquid Crystals”
1991 Sylvian Cappell Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences “Singular Spaces and Intersection Homology”
1992 Nigel Hitchen University of Warwick “Flat Connections and Their Applications”
1993 Persi Diaconis Harvard University “Geometry and Randomness”
1994     Conference on Semigroup Theory and Its Applications in Memory of Alfred H. Clifford
1995 Peter Sarnak Princeton University “General Overview of Spectral Problems Coming from Arithmetical Manifolds”
Spring 1996 Dan Volculescu Univeristy of California, Berkeley “An Introduction to Free Probability Theory”

Fall

1996

 Paul Fife

University of Utah

 “Mathematical Issues in the Dynamics of Phase Transitions”
Spring 1997     Spring Clifford Conference in Partial Differential Equations

Fall

1997

 Peter Kronheimer Harvard University “Four-Dimensional Geometry and Symplectic Topology”
1998 Peter Bickel Univeristy of California, Berkeley “The Method of Sieves in Non and Semiparametric Statistics”
1999 Alexandre J. Chorin Univeristy of California, Berkeley “Optimal Prediction”
2000 Robert Friedman Columbia University “Lie Groups, and String Theory”
2002 Sergei N. Artemov City University of New York “Explicit Logic for Computer Science”
2003 T. J. Pedley Cambridge University “Theoretical Fluid Mechanics in Biology”
2004 Yakov Eliashberg Stanford University “Symplectic Field Theory”

Spring

2005

 Jonathan Borwein Dalhousie University "Experimental (Computational) Mathematics - and Its Philosophical Implications"
2006 Not held due to Katrina    
2007 Eitan Tadmor University of Maryland

"Computational and Analytical Strategies in Nonlinear Time-Dependent Problems"

*Fields Medal winners. Read more about the Fields Medal...

Mathematics Department
Tulane University
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New Orleans, LA 70118
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Last Updated:March 13, 2008
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