Workshop

The introductory workshop plays a pivotal role in the program, whose main goal is to create a common understanding of the various problems and new ideas which have recently arisen in the theory of random matrices. This workshop is not intended for the specialist, although many experts will be there to participate and interact with others interested in learning about this material, but rather for the mathematician in any field who would like to know more about these exciting areas and their applications in other parts of mathematics. The workshop will be a mini-version of the entire semester and is intended to give overview of the whole program. To that end, several short series of lectures (one series = two or three one hour lectures) given by the experts in the various aspects of the program and addressed to a broad audience will be organized. The topics of the lectures will be chosen to exhibit the relation of random matrix models to completely integrable systems; the Riemann-Hilbert and Virasoro algebra approaches; the related developments in topological field theories, exactly solvable statistical mechanics models, and representation theory of quantum affine algebras; relations to number theory and to quantum chaos. There will be four lectures each day supplemented by informal discussions and ad hoc seminars. Lecturers will include: R. Baxter, E. Brézin, P. Deift, B. Dubrovin, M. Jimbo, M. Mehta, P. van Möerbeke, P. Sarnak, C. Tracy, H. Widom, and X. Zhou.