PRIZES AND HONOURS

March 19, 2024

Distinguished Lecture Series

The Fields Institute Distinguished Lecture Series (DLS) is intended to bring a leading international mathematician to give a series of three lectures. In addition, at least the following lectures should be aimed at a general mathematical audience including post-doctoral fellows and graduate students.

2010 Fields Medallist
CEDRIC VILLANI
Institut Henri Poincaré, Paris
Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1

PUBLIC LECTURE Video of talk)
Monday, November 1
, 2010 at 5 p.m.

What is the fate of the solar system?

November 3, 2010 Audio and slides
Particle systems and Landau damping

Fields Institute

November 4, 2010 Audio and slides
From echo analysis to nonlinear Landau damping

Fields Institute

One of the fundamental and initially controversial theories of classical physics is Boltzmann's kinetic theory of gases. Instead of tracking the individual motions of billions of atoms, it describes the evolution of the probability that a particle has a certain position and velocity. The equilibrium probability distributions have been known for more than a hundred years, but it has been very difficult to understand whether and how fast convergence to equilibrium occurs.

Villani (in collaboration with Desvillettes) obtained the first results on the convergence rate for initial data not close to equilibrium. In joint work with Mouhot, he established nonlinear Landau damping for the kinetic equations of plasma physics, settling a long-standing debate. He is one of the pioneers in applications of optimal transport theory to geometric and functional inequalities.

Speakers in the Distinguished Lecture Series (DLS) have made outstanding contributions to their field of mathematics. The DLS consists of a series of three one-hour lectures.
Index of Fields Distinguished and Coxeter Lectures.