Number Theory

One sometimes hears that the indigenous peoples of the Americas are for some reason not predisposed to be able to do mathematics. This belief is surprising, since the mathematical traditions of the Western Hemisphere prior to European contact were already rich and extensive. This talk will focus on some of those traditions, primarily Central American but with some information about mathematical traditions in Algonkian cultures such as the Blackfoot.  Almost all of this talk will be accessible to any interested listener, with perhaps five minutes in the middle using a small amount of very elementary number theory. Along the way any listener who has ever eaten an 18 Rabbits granola bar will learn why doing so celebrates indigenous mathematics. 

ABOUT THE RICHARD AND LOUISE GUY LECTURE SERIES:
The Richard & Louise Guy lecture series celebrates the joy of discovery and wonder in mathematics for everyone. Indeed, the lecture series was a 90th birthday present from Louise Guy to Richard in recognition of his love of mathematics and his desire to share his passion with the world. Richard Guy is the author of over 100 publications including works in combinatorial game theory, number theory and graph theory. He strives to make mathematics accessible to all. The other contributions to the lecture series have been made by Elwyn Berlekamp (2006), John Conway (2007), Richard Nowakowski (2008), William Pulleyblank (2009), Erik Demaine (2010), Noam Elkies (2011), Ravi Vakil (2012) and Carl Pomerance (2013).

What protects your computer password when you log on, or your credit card number when you shop on-line, from hackers listening on the communication lines? Can two people who never met create a secret language in the presence of others, which no one but them can understand? Is it possible for a group of people to play a (card-less) game of Poker on the telephone, without anyone being able to cheat? Can you convince others that you can solve a tough math (or SudoKu) puzzle, without giving them the slightest hint of your solution?These questions (and their remarkable answers) are in the realm of modern cryptography. In this talk I plan to survey some of the mathematical and computational ideas, definitions and assumptions which underlie privacy and security of the Internet and electronic commerce. We shall see how these lead to solutions of the questions above and many others. I will also explain the fragility of the current foundations of modern cryptography, and the need for stronger ones.No special background will be assumed.

I will discuss techniques to get upper and lower bounds for moments of zeta and L-functions. The lower bounds are unconditional and the upper bounds in general rely on the Riemann Hypothesis. In several cases of low moments, one can obtain asymptotics, and I may discuss a couple of such recent cases.

This lecture is part of a series of 3

1. Lecture 1: distribution-values-zeta-and-l-functions-1-3
2. Lecture 2: Moments of zeta and L-functions on the Critical Line, I
3. Lecture 3: Moments of zeta and L-functions on the critical line, II

Dirichlet’s class number formula has a nice conjectural generalization in the form of Stark’s conjectures. These conjectures pertain to the value of Artin L-series at s = 1. However, the special values at other integer points also are interesting and in this context, there is a famous conjecture of Zagier. We will give a brief outline of this and display some recent results.

This lecture is part of a series of 3.

• Lecture 1: Introduction to Artin L-series
• Lecture 2: Holomorphy Conjecture and Recent Progress
• Lecture 3: Special Values of Artin L-series