Inaugural lecture

A nice tradition of ETH Zürich (and some other institutions) is the inaugural lecture that newly hired members of the faculty give to describe to a large audience some of their research topics (indeed, the lectures are open to the general public). I just gave my own Einführungsvorlesung, entitled “The art of sieving”. The actual lecture can be seen online, but it may also be interesting to have a look at the full beamer presentation, since I ended up presenting only about three-quarters of what I had prepared, and some of the most interesting things (at least, the closest to current research) were located towards the end. (Precisely, I stopped at the end of page 74 of the PDF).

Of course, my lecture does not compete — in terms of sheer viewability value — with the presentation on Monday of Marc Pollefeys, who showed the current state of the art of 3D reconstruction of objects and scenes using (2D) video and pictures, or with the (possibly apocryphal)  inaugural lecture of P. L. Nageoire for the Chaire d’études des alcools forts of Collège de France.

I still hope that some of the excitement of studying primes will come through. Encouragingly, two colleagues who are now retired, and who were not previously working in “Pure” Mathematics told me during the Apéro afterwards that they are happy to study prime numbers now as a hobby, and had liked my lecture.

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Kowalski

I am a professor of mathematics at ETH Zürich since 2008.

One thought on “Inaugural lecture”

  1. “…with the (possibly apocryphal) inaugural lecture of P. L. Nageoire for the Chaire d’études des alcools forts of Collège de France.”
    Possibly apocryphal ?!
    Come, come, my friend: you seem to be affected by the Bourbaki syndrome.
    Be that as it may, thank you for this most erudite text.

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