Series: Mathematics Colloquium

Date: Thursday, September 19, 2002

Time: 4:30 - 5:30 PM

Place: 102 McAllister Building

Host: Leonid Vaserstein

Refreshments: 4:00 - 4:30 PM, in 212 McAllister

Speaker: Ravi A. Rao, Tata Institute, India

Title: Raga Bhimpalasi: The Vaserstein-Suslin Jugalbandhi

Abstract: 

The study of unimodular rows, and their orbit spaces, over a
commutative ring with 1, lies in the fertile cross-section of ideas
from Algebra, Algebraic Topology, Number Theory, and Algebraic
Geometry. Witt group structures, Cohomotopy groups, Mennicke symbols,
Reciprocity Laws, etc make their appearance very naturally.  We shall
discuss the connection of the study of orbit spaces, via a symbiosis
of constructions of L.N. Vaserstein, A. Suslin, and its relation to
problems in classical K-theory, and to the program of J.-P. Serre,
which interconnected the study of projective R-modules with problems
of efficient generation of ideals of R.