Events items teaser

Distinguished Tutte Lecture - Lauren K. Williams
2020-06-05 15:30 (America/Toronto)
[Lauren K. Williams]

TITLE: Matroids, tropical geometry, and positivity

Speaker:
Lauren K. Williams

Affiliation:
Harvard University & Radcliffe Institute

Zoom:
Please email Emma Watson.

ABSTRACT:

The theory of matroids -- a class of combinatorial objects which
simultaneously generalize graphs as well as vectors in a vector space
-- was pioneered by William Tutte in his 1948 PhD thesis. Matroids
are also closely connected to the Grassmannian and the tropical
Grassmannian. In recent years, mathematicians and physicists have
been exploring positive notions of all of these objects, finding
applications to scattering amplitudes and shallow water waves. In my
talk I will give an introduction to matroids, tropical geometry, and
positivity, and survey some of the beautiful results and applications.
