SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMS AND ACTIVITIES

FUNDAMENTALS OF THE LANGLANDS PROGRAM
In honour of Ngô Bào Châu

	SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS
	Ngô Bào Châu Pierre-Henri Chaudouard Edward Frenkel Michael Harris Tamas Hausel Nigel Hitchin Mark Kisin	Sophie Morel David Nadler Peter Sarnak Peter Scholze Diana Shelstad Richard Taylor Jean-Loup Waldsburger Edward Witten
	ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
	Jim Arthur (Chair), Edward Frenkel, Gerard Laumon

The Symposium will be centered on the work of Ngô Bào Châu, and its current and potential impact. The goal is to bring the general area of automorphic forms and the Langlands Program to a broader audience and, in addition, to present recent developments in the area that are related to the work of Ngô, such as the geometric Langlands correspondence, moduli spaces of Higgs bundles, and S-duality in Quantum Field Theory. The scientific program is aimed at a wide audience, including graduate students, mathematicians in other areas of research, and scientists for whom mathematics is an important part of their work.

The Symposium will feature a public opening with Ingrid Daubechies, President of the International Mathematical Union, His Excellency Le Sy Vuong Ha, Ambassador of Vietnam to Canada, the Honourable Bob Rae, Leader of Liberal Party of Canada, Member of Parliament for Toronto Centre, former Premier of Ontario, and the Honourable Glen Murray, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, Government of Ontario. There will be public lectures by Ngô Bào Châu and James Arthur, as well as a panel discussion for high-school and undergraduate students.

ABOUT THE BACKGROUND IMAGE
The simplest case of the Fundamental Lemma counts points with alternating signs at various distances from the center of a certain tree-like structure. Here it counts 1, 1– 3 = -2, 1 – 3 + 6 = 4, 1 – 3 + 6 – 12 = -8, etc. But this case turned out to be deceptively simple, and Ngô’s final proof required a huge range of sophisticated mathematical tools.
Graphic and caption by Bill Casselman