From owner-nmbrthry@listserv.nodak.edu Mon Nov 8 19:50:02 1999 Approved-By: "Victor S. Miller" Message-ID: <19991108155734.V3025@moby.msri.org> Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 19:49:36 -0500 Reply-To: Joe Buhler Sender: Number Theory List From: Joe Buhler Subject: MSRI Workshop on Modularity of Elliptic Curves To: NMBRTHRY@listserv.nodak.edu Content-Length: 2383 MODULARITY OF ELLIPTIC CURVES AND BEYOND December 6-10, 1999 The purpose of this note is to announce a workshop at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in Berkeley, California, USA. A famous conjecture, hinted at by Taniyama, and formulated precisely by Shimura and others, asserts that every elliptic curve over the rational numbers is ``modular.'' This has been a strong motivating force for 30 years of intense work in arithmetic algebraic geometry. Fundamental work of Andrew Wiles and Richard Taylor established the conjecture for a large class of elliptic curves. Wiles combined these results with a theorem of Ribet, and work of many others, to prove Fermat's Last Theorem. Christophe Breuil, Brian Conrad, Fred Diamond, and Richard Taylor are preparing a paper that proves the modularity conjecture for all elliptic curves. The argument follows the general outline of the work of Wiles and Taylor, though there are many technical details. MSRI will host a ``hot topics'' conference during the week of December 6-10, 1999, that will celebrate this development, and cover related developments on elliptic curves, modular forms, and galois representations. The speakers will include the following: Christophe Breuil Kevin Buzzard Pierre Colmez Brian Conrad Henri Darmon Fred Diamond Mark Dickinson Matthias Flach Jean-Marc Fontaine Kazuhiro Fujiwara Ken Ribet Nick Sheppard-Barron Chris Skinner Richard Taylor Jean-Pierre Wintenberger The organizing committee consists of: Brian Conrad, Jean-Marc Fontaine, Barry Mazur, Ken Ribet (chair), and Richard Taylor. Further information can be found through the MSRI web page (www.msri.org) and the conference Web page http://www.msri.org/activities/events/9900/hottopics/ . Joe Buhler Deputy Director Mathematical Sciences Research Institute 510 643-6056 1000 Centennial Drive 510 642-8609 (fax) Berkeley, CA 94709 jpb@msri.org Ken Ribet 510 642 0648 Mathematics Department 510 642 5026 (messages) UC Berkeley ribet@math.berkeley.edu Berkeley, CA 94720-3840 http://www.math.berkeley.edu/~ribet/ USA