2025 Whittaker Lecture The title of this year's Whittaker Lecture by Professor Ana Caraiani (Imperial College London) is Congruences and the p-adic geometry of Shimura varieties.Abstract:This talk is meant to be a gentle introduction to the Langlands program, one of the most exciting and far-reaching projects in modern mathematics. This program is related to some of the oldest and deepest questions in number theory, including the law of quadratic reciprocity of Euler, Legendre and Gauss, and Fermat’s last theorem. I will give a few explicit examples that generalise quadratic reciprocity to higher-dimensional settings, and then discuss the role of congruences in propagating Langlands reciprocity to ever more elusive settings. I will end by introducing Shimura varieties and their p-adic geometry, which promises to tell us much more about congruences in the near future.Bio:Ana Caraiani is an arithmetic geometer working on the Langlands program and Shimura varieties and is a Professor at Imperial College London. After a PhD from Harvard in 2012, she was a postdoc at UChicago, IAS and Bonn before joining Imperial College in 2017 as a faculty member. Among many prizes, Caraiani won the Whitehead Prize in 2018, was an Invited Speaker at the 2022 ICM and won the New Horizons Prize in Mathematics in 2023. She was also elected as a Fellow of the AMS in 2020 and became a member of the Academia Europea in 2024. Maxwell Institute Website Oct 23 2025 13.50 - 15.30 2025 Whittaker Lecture The Maxwell Institute distinguished lecture series includes four annual lectures. The Whittaker lecture commemorates English mathematician Sir Edmund Whittaker (1873-1956). Lecture Theatre 4, Appleton Tower for the talk 13:50 5th floor of the Bayes Centre (MI side) for cakes afterwards 15:00-15:30
2025 Whittaker Lecture The title of this year's Whittaker Lecture by Professor Ana Caraiani (Imperial College London) is Congruences and the p-adic geometry of Shimura varieties.Abstract:This talk is meant to be a gentle introduction to the Langlands program, one of the most exciting and far-reaching projects in modern mathematics. This program is related to some of the oldest and deepest questions in number theory, including the law of quadratic reciprocity of Euler, Legendre and Gauss, and Fermat’s last theorem. I will give a few explicit examples that generalise quadratic reciprocity to higher-dimensional settings, and then discuss the role of congruences in propagating Langlands reciprocity to ever more elusive settings. I will end by introducing Shimura varieties and their p-adic geometry, which promises to tell us much more about congruences in the near future.Bio:Ana Caraiani is an arithmetic geometer working on the Langlands program and Shimura varieties and is a Professor at Imperial College London. After a PhD from Harvard in 2012, she was a postdoc at UChicago, IAS and Bonn before joining Imperial College in 2017 as a faculty member. Among many prizes, Caraiani won the Whitehead Prize in 2018, was an Invited Speaker at the 2022 ICM and won the New Horizons Prize in Mathematics in 2023. She was also elected as a Fellow of the AMS in 2020 and became a member of the Academia Europea in 2024. Maxwell Institute Website Oct 23 2025 13.50 - 15.30 2025 Whittaker Lecture The Maxwell Institute distinguished lecture series includes four annual lectures. The Whittaker lecture commemorates English mathematician Sir Edmund Whittaker (1873-1956). Lecture Theatre 4, Appleton Tower for the talk 13:50 5th floor of the Bayes Centre (MI side) for cakes afterwards 15:00-15:30
Oct 23 2025 13.50 - 15.30 2025 Whittaker Lecture The Maxwell Institute distinguished lecture series includes four annual lectures. The Whittaker lecture commemorates English mathematician Sir Edmund Whittaker (1873-1956).
