Overview

Grande conférence du CRM by James Maynard

The magic of the primes

September 8, 2022, 7:30 p.m.

Université de Montréal, Pavillon Jean-Coutu, Amphi S1-151

The conference will be followed by a wine reception

 James Maynard
 University of Oxford

Abstract

Prime numbers are some of the most fascinating things in mathematics. On the one hand they are basic and fundamental, but on the other hand they remain mysterious and poorly understood - despite being studied for thousands of years!

I’ll explain why prime numbers are vital both in pure mathematics and in the real world, and how current mathematics is able to make progress on some of the key questions which have occupied mathematicians going back to the ancient Greeks.

Biography

James Maynard completed his PhD at Oxford in 2013. After postdocs at the CRM in Montreal, Berkeley, Princeton and Oxford he became a professor at the Mathematical Institute at Oxford in 2017.

James Maynard works on the distribution of primes and, in particular, on prime spreads. Since his PhD, he has obtained spectacular results in this direction. These have earned him numerous awards, including an Erdös Prize and the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize in 2014, a Whitehead Prize in 2015 and a European Mathematical Society Prize in 2016. In 2022, his research was awarded the Fields Medal.