Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: 114 McAllister Building
Name: Don Zagier
Affiliation: MPI-Bonn & College de France
Title: The enigma of Ramanujan's mock theta functions
Abstract: In January of 1916, a few months before his death, Ramanujan wrote his famous last letter to Hardy telling him about a new class of functions he had discovered which he called "mock theta functions". These functions have been the subject of intense study, and many wonderful identities concerning them were proved in the intervening years, notably by G.N. Watson, G.E. Andrews and D.R. Hickerson, but they have nevertheless remained mysterious, in particular because no intrinsic definition was known. Quite recently, Sander Zwegers gave such a definition and showed how to interpret the mock theta functions within the theory of modular forms, thus opening the way to further progress and to the construction of infinitely many new examples. The lecture will give a general survey, not requiring any previous knowledge. Some more details will be given in the lecture series "New Aspects of Modular Forms".
