Location: room 611 of the Wiskunde building (campus De Uithof) Budapestlaan 6, Utrecht.
Date and time: Thursday, May 6, 2010 15:30-16:30. The lecture is preceded by coffee, tea, and cookies from 15.00 to 15.30 hour in the same room.
Abstract: In a talk delivered in Leipzig (Germany) on June 11, 1900, Friedrich Engel gave the first public account of his newly discovered description of the smallest exceptional Lie group G2, and he wrote in the corresponding note to the Royal Saxonian Academy of Sciences: Moreover, we hereby obtain a direct definition of our 14-dimensional simple group [G2] which is as elegant as one can wish for. Indeed, Engel’s definition of G2 as the isotropy group of a generic 3-form in 7 dimensions is at the basis of a rich geometry that exists only on 7-dimensional manifolds, whose full beauty has been unveiled in the last thirty years.
This talk is devoted to a detailed historical and mathematical account of G2’s first years, in particular the contributions and the life of Engel’s almost forgotten Ph.D. student Walter Reichel, who worked out the details of this description in 1907. We will also give an introduction to modern G2 geometry and its relevance in theoretical physics (in particular, superstring theory).
Schedule of the Utrecht math colloquium : This year's talks. Last term’s talks. Last year's talks. Guidelines for speakers.
Other math colloquia : TU Delft, Leiden, UvA Amsterdam, VU Amsterdam, Nijmegen.
Organisers : Sasha Gnedin and Paul Zegeling
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