NEWS
ABOUT THE GRADUATE PROGRAM
From Professor Paul Garrett,
Director of Graduate Studies
In March 2002 we gave our first
Open House for recruiting new
graduate students. Thirty students
from all around the country
came to socialize and hear talks
from several of our faculty:
Carme Calderer, Paul Garrett,
Claudia Neuhauser, Vic Reiner,
Fadil Santosa, Arnd Scheel,
and Vladimir Sverak. Despite
the ice storm that weekend (which
did indeed amaze visitors from
the South), the Open House was
very effective in introducing
prospective students to our
department and to each other.
In July and August we welcomed
27 new TAs, from all around
the world. The international
students arrived first for the
program conducted by the Center
for Learning and Teaching Services
that helps orient them in the
ambient language and culture.
The CTLS people also assess
communication skills, in addition
to English fluency, and make
recommendations about readiness
to work in a classroom. The
domestic students arrived soon
after, to participate in our
newly-created intensive mini-courses,
as an academic orientation prior
to our already-well-established
orientation aimed at TA duties.
Over two weeks, several of our
faculty spoke to the new students,
touching upon central topics
in mathematics and their relation
to ongoing research. (Larry
Gray, Paul Garrett, Don Kahn,
Markus Keel, Al Marden, Willard
Miller, and George Sell all
gave several talks.) Given the
very positive response from
students and faculty alike,
we will continue and try to
expand this new part of our
orientation in future summers.
In addition to the CTLS orientation
and the academic orientation,
the School of Mathematics conducted
its own TA orientation, introducing
students to the mundane but
important facts that they’ll
need in order to function as
Teaching Assistants in the School
of Mathematics, and videotaping
practice sessions in which they
presented material as a TA would.
Several senior TAs (John Hall,
Hande Metin, Michael Galbraith,
Jon Rogness, Gabriel Soto, James
Swenson, Pang-Yen Weng, and
Dan Drake) assisted, lending
their insights and perspectives.
Play-acting scripted and acted
by the grad students made it
all the more memorable.
The Written Preliminary Ph.D.
exams were given the week before
classes, and as expected many
students made progress toward
completion of this requirement.
Apart from making progress toward
the Ph.D., TAs also get a pay
raise for completion of the
Written Prelims.
In Fall 2002 we gave our first
Fall Open House for prospective
students from local colleges
and universities. Several of
our faculty (George Sell, Vic
Reiner, Arnd Scheel, Vladimir
Sverak, Fadil Santosa, Carme
Calderer, and Paul Garrett)
gave talks about a variety of
aspects of current research
in our department.
Ph.D.’s granted 2001-02:
Kyle Calderhead (advisor Professor
Victor Reiner)
Won Jae Chang (advisor Professor
Nicolai Krylov)
Vladimir Itskov (advisor Professor
Peter Olver)
Kyung-Keun Kang (advisor Professor
Vladimir Sverak)
Jun-Seok Kim (advisor Professor
John Lowengrub)
Nathan Reading (advisor Professor
Victor Reiner)
Jaiok Roh (advisor Professor
George Sell)
Cetin Urtis (advisor Professor
Paul Garrett)
Jing Wang (co-advisors Professor
Robert Gulliver, Professor Fadil
Santosa)
Nathan Wodarz (advisor Professor
Donald Kahn)
M.S.’s granted 2001-02:
Hassib Amini (advisor Professor
Joel Roberts)
Hua Bai (advisor Professor Dennis
Stanton)
Kevin Collins (specialization
in Industrial Math, advisor
Professor Fadil Santosa)
John Eian (advisor Professor
Peter Rejto)
Melissa Everson (specialization
in Math. Ed., advisor Professor
Harvey Keynes)
Miriam Freedman (specialization
in Applied Math, advisor Professor
Rachel Kuske)
Michael Galbraith (advisor Professor
Robert Gulliver)
Thomas Hoft (specialization
in Applied Math, advisor Professor
Fadil Santosa)
Justin Jacobs (specialization
in Math. Ed., advisor Professor
Harvey Keynes)
Minchul Kang (advisor Professor
Hans Othmer)
Cunbo Liu (specialization in
Actuarial Science, advisor Professor
Stephen Agard)
Nataliya (Kerbel) Mazo (advisor
Professor Rachel Kuske)
Ivan Osipkov (advisor Professor
Wei-Ming Ni)
Karen Riga (specialization in
Math. Ed., advisor Professor
Harvey Keynes)
John Yap (specialization in
actuarial science, advisor Professor
Stephen Agard)
“Physical Mathematics”
Course for Graduate Students
Interaction of Mathematics and
Physics has been very fruitful
for both subjects from very
early on. While in the ages
from Newton and Leibniz to Euler,
to Lagrange and Laplace, the
two fields were practically
indistinguishable, further development
brought not only incredible
depth, but also contributed
to certain divergence of interests,
methods, and motivations. The
situation in the 20th century
was marked by periodically discovering
that methods developed solely
for the sake of one field could
also be used to make unexpected
breakthroughs in the other.
In the late 20th century, when
string theory came about and
the theoretical physicists proved
to be at times more abstract
than the fellow mathematicians,
the history of science got an
unusual shift: the vague ideas
of physics found their place
within the rigor of mathematics
and produced new methods, fields,
and of course, remarkable theorems.Examples
include statistical and quantum
mechanical methods in knot theory,
gauge theory methods in low-dimensional
topology, instanton ideas throughout
geometry, Feynman integral and
diagram techniques in algebra
and combinatorics, the inverse
scattering problem and quantum
group theory, mirror symmetry
and enumerative algebraic geometry,
to name a few. Perhaps, these
exciting developments created
a field that may be called Physical
Mathematics: Mathematics no
longer plays a service role;
it is rather Physics which is
being applied to Mathematics.
Physical methods thereby became
indispensable in training the
modern mathematician, and one
of the main goals of the graduate
course Math 8390 “Topics
in Mathematical Physics”
developed in the Fall of 2001
was to introduce the graduate
students to the world of Physical
Mathematics. The course was
designed as a one-semester topics
course for advanced graduate
students, and was in fact attended
not only by students, but also
by several faculty members.
The course is centered around
recent applications of ideas
from quantum field theory to
pure, “mainstream”
mathematics, presented in a
form accessible to graduate
students. Topics include operad
theory, moduli spaces, homotopy
algebra, algebraic structures
in string theory, deformation
quantization, and graph homology.
Lecture notes are posted on
the course web page http://www.math.umn.edu/~voronov/8390/
Alexander Voronov, Professor
of Mathematics
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