27 June – Shigeru Mukai: Finite simple groups and K3-like varieties
The classification of finite simple groups, comprising tens of thousands of pages and famously singling
out 26 sporadic groups, is widely regarded as one of the most impressive collected efforts in the whole of mathematics. This talk is a report on Mukai’s attempt to realize these very large and supremely complicated groups geometrically, as acting on very interesting algebraic varieties.
Shigeru Mukai is a Japanese algebraic geometer from Kyoto University. He is famous for having introduced in 1981 what came to be known as the Fourier-Mukai transform, a concept that now permeates multiple parts of modern mathematics. He has made fundamental contributions to K3 surfaces and vector bundles, to Brill-Noether theory and to the study of Fano threefolds. He has also done important work in invariant theory in connection with Hilbert’s 14th problem.
