Overview

16th International Symposium on Orthogonal Polynomials, Special Functions and Applications - June 13-17, 2022 - (Online)

Registration deadline: Friday June 10, 2022 4 p.m. (EDT)

The 16th International Symposium on Orthogonal Polynomials, Special Functions and Applications (OPSFA16), organised by the Centre de recherches mathématiques will take place online from June 13-17, 2022..

Conferences in the OPSFA series provide a forum for mathematicians, physicists, computational scientists, and application scientists in other fields to communicate recent research results in the areas of orthogonal polynomials and special functions (OPSF). OPSF plays an essential role in analytical and computational investigations in applied mathematics. Information about previous conferences in the OPSFA series is available at https://wis.kuleuven.be/events/archive/OPSFA

This symposium is an event of the SIAM Activity Group on Orthogonal Polynomials and Special Functions. The activity group promotes basic research in orthogonal polynomials and special functions; furthers the application of this subject in other parts of mathematics, and in science and industry; and encourages and supports the exchange of information, ideas, and techniques between workers in this field and other mathematicians and scientists. The activity group also awards the Gábor Szegő Prize every two years to an early-career researcher for outstanding research contributions in the area of orthogonal polynomials and special functions.

This conference will be dedicated to the memory of Richard Askey.

Richard Allen (Dick) Askey was born on June 4, 1933 and died at the age of 86 on October 9, 2019. He revitalized the subject of special functions by his very deep insight into mathematical analysis and discrete mathematics. Among some of his many contributions, we note the Askey—Wilson integral and polynomials, Askey—Gasper positivity results, the Askey—Roy integral, the Askey—Ismail combinatorial works and his work on Pollaczek polynomials. One of Dick Askey's major contributions was the insight to see that many q-series identities, old and new, are different q-analogies of the beta integral. Askey also had major contributions in the explanation and extension of the work of Ramanujan. He promoted multivariate special functions, analysis on root systems, and Macdonald-type identities.

The Gábor Szegő Prize:

Every two years the Gábor Szegő Prize is awarded to an early career researcher for outstanding contributions to research in the field of orthogonal polynomials and special functions The Gabor Szegő prize 2021 is awarded to Dr Atul Dixit for his impressive scientific work solving problems related to number theory using special functions, in particular related to the work of Ramanujan. Atul did his PhD in Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his advisor was Bruce C. Berndt. Currently Atul is an Associate Professor in the Discipline of Mathematics at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, India.

The committee thought that the scientific work of Atul Dixit was very impressive, linking analysis, number theory and special functions, and, in doing so, he has made a significant contribution to the field of Orthogonal Polynomials and Special Functions. In particular, his paper "New pathways and connections in number theory and analysis motivated by two incorrect claims of Ramanujan:, co-authored with Arindam Roy, Alexandru Zaharescu, and Bruce Berndt. This is over 100 pages in length and appeared in Advances in Mathematics [304 (2017), pp 809-929]. In addition to this paper, which was mentioned in the prize nomination, Atul Dixit has published a significant number of papers since receiving his PhD in 2011, which have been published in a variety of quality journals, with various co-authors.