SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMS AND ACTIVITIES

THE FIELDS INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH IN MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES

Fields-Carleton Distinguished Lecture Series March 7-8, 2013 Thomas Hales University of Pittsburg

Thomas Callister Hales is an American mathematician working on the Langlands program. He is known in the area for having worked on the fundamental lemma, and proving a special case of it over the group Sp(4). Many of his ideas were incorporated into the final proof, due to Ngô Bao Châu. He is also known for his 1998 computer-aided proof of the Kepler conjecture, a centuries-old problem in discrete geometry which states that the most space-efficient way to pack spheres is in a pyramid shape. Hales also proved the honeycomb conjecture.

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