METU Department of Mathematics Visitor book (1987-2022)

Date

1987

Author

Metadata

Show full item record

Item Usage Stats

59
views

0
downloads

Prof Dr. Aydın Aytuna 16.10.2023 - This manuscript presents the handwritten abstracts of lectures by randomly chosen visiting scholars at seminars held at the Middle East Technical University (METU) Mathematics Department dating back to 1987. Also included are messages left by Arf Lecturers and other distinguished visitors as well as remarks of Rob Kirby during his visit as an external reviewer.This document, in some sense, partly reflects the mathematical spirit of the era in this part of the world. We hope that the mathematical community will find these abstracts interesting.When the governance of the Mathematics Department asked me to write a preface to this document, it naturally revived my memory of the days I enjoyed as a student and as a faculty member at METU. The Mathematics Department came into being in 1959 as a service department. Yet, in the second half of the sixties, it has undergone a decisive metamorphosis upon Cahit Arf and Gündüz Masotoschi İkeda's joining the Department. Attracting talented and young mathematicians, it soon became one of Turkey's most prestigious mathematical departments. General seminars played a vital role in the organization of the Department. As undergraduate students, we were encouraged to participate in those seminars. Though unable to understand all the mathematics presented, I recall the enthusiastic atmosphere and impassioned remarks of Cahit Arf on almost every topic discussed. Most probably, it was in these seminars that Arf had pointed out to Robert Langlands a paper of Helmut Hasse that was relevant to his work. In the words of Langlands:''Thanks to Cahit Bey, I solved this problem during my stay in Ankara and proved the existence of the epsilon factor. Perhaps this theorem would never have been proved if I had been somewhere else that year...''* These seminars also had a vital social component which, for example, proved essential in keeping up the faculty morale during difficult times, as I experienced and as İkeda recalls in his article on Cahit Arf**. Let me finish by expressing my hope that the Department will keep up the tradition of hosting fellow mathematicians worldwide in their ''general seminars'' and on special occasions such as the ''Cahit Arf Lectures'' series for generations to come. * P. Roquette: INTRODUCTION OF LANGLANDS at the Arf Lecture,11 November 2004, Mathematisches Institute, Universitat Heidelberg. ** G. M. Ikeda: Benim Gözümde Matematikçi Cahit Arf, Bilim Teknik 363, TUBİTAK 1998.

Subject Keywords

METU Mathematics, Visitors, METU history

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/105635

Collections

METU Bellek, Multimedia