Symposium with Martin Hairer, February 2021

Over 3–19 February 2021, we explored the mathematics of Fields Medallist and Breakthrough Prize winner Martin Hairer, Professor of Mathematics at Imperial College London, in the SMRI-MATRIX Online Symposium with Martin Hairer. View the recordings on the Martin Hairer playlist on YouTube.

The symposium featured talks by Professor Hairer on his work in stochastic analysis and lecture discussions including an accessible colloquium. The symposium also featured talks by Australian mathematicians and workshop sessions, which took place at various locations across Australia.

Whether you just want a broad introduction to Martin Hairer’s mathematical world, or you are keen to gain a deeper understanding of some of his techniques, this online symposium is the right event for you!

The symposium was organised by Beniamin Goldys (The University of Sydney), Ngan Le (Monash University) and Pierre Portal (The Australian National University), and jointly supported by the Sydney Mathematical Research Institute and MATRIX.

Colloquium talk: ‘Taming Infinities’

Abstract: Some physical and mathematical theories have the unfortunate feature that if one takes them at face value, many quantities of interest appear to be infinite! What’s worse, this doesn’t just happen for some exotic theories, but in the standard theories describing some of the most fundamental aspects of nature. Various techniques, usually going under the common name of “renormalisation” have been developed over the years to address this, allowing mathematicians and physicists to tame these infinities. We will dip our toes into some of the conceptual and mathematical aspects of these techniques and we will see how they have recently been used in probability theory to study equations whose meaning was not even clear until recently.

 

Survey of research directions: ‘Open problems and conjectures in SPDE theory’

Abstract: We will survey a number of open problems and conjectures both within SPDE theory and linking SPDE theory to other areas of mathematics.

 

Larissa Fedunik-Hofman