School Whittaker Colloquium by Edward Witten

The School of Mathematics Whittaker Colloquium will be given by Professor Edward Witten (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) at 4PM on Friday, 13th May in the Main Lecture Room of the Swann Building on the King's Buildings campus.

"A New Look At Integrable Spin Systems'' 

Abstract:  Integrable models of statistical mechanics in two dimensions, such as the Ising model, have  provided important and surprising  examples and have been studied from  many points of view by both  physicists and mathematicians.  In recent years, Kevin Costello has   developed a new approach to these models, using  a four-dimensional cousin of three-dimensional Chern-Simons gauge  theory in which the ``spectral parameter'' has a geometric explanation.  This talk will be primarily an  introduction to the work of Costello.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Witten

Professor Witten has been elected this year to an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.