Just after the end of the semester last week, I went to a short meeting organized by J. Keating, Z. Rudnick and T. Wooley, in the stately English house of Chicheley Hall,
where the Royal Society has a conference center. This was quite a fun occasion, and not only because the curtains had one the most interesting decorative pattern I have seen during years of extensive study:
The talks were only 30 minutes long; because of this and the absence of blackboards, they were all beamer talks, and I’ve uploaded my slides here. They might be useful even for participants in the meeting, since I only had time to cover the first 60% or so of what I had planned, which was a survey of my most recent work with É. Fouvry and Ph. Michel (available here, and which I hope to discuss in more detail in a later post)…
Did you channel your inner entomologist to determine what the decorative pattern was supposed to represent?
Some kind of flea, but is it a generic, platonic idea of a flea, or a specific species? Who knows…
My local expert suggests that it is a bed-bug. I hope you didn’t wake up during the conference feeling itchy…