Salt Lake City 04

The Department of Mathematics at the University of Utah will host a two week mini-course, titled “Classical Problems in Commutative Algebra”, on homological conjectures in commutative algebra, June 7-18 2004.
During the past 30 years, the homological conjectures and related questions have had a significant impact on the development of commutative algebra. These problems originated in the work of Serre, Auslander, Peskine, Szpiro, and others. In 1974, Mel Hochster gave an overview of these problems in a series of lectures providing answers to some of the questions and indicating further directions of research. Since then, important contributions were made by various experts and some of these conjectures have been solved. However, some of them still await answers. This area of research remains a rich one and is as influential today in the development of commutative algebra as it was decades ago.
The mini-course plans to introduce graduate students with some background in commutative algebra and young researchers to this area of research. The lectures will provide an introduction to the subject, an overview of the main contributions of the past decades, as well as a discussion of the remaining open questions. The first week will develop the fundamental concepts needed in the second week when the major directions of research will be discussed.
The program is designed for graduate students who have studied commutative algebra at the graduate level. Limited funding is available for a small number of students who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents through the VIGRE grant of the Department of Mathematics. Students and junior researchers with other means of support are also encouraged to apply. There is no registration fee and on-campus housing is available.
Speakers include Florian Enescu, Claudia Miller, Sean Sather-Wagstaff, Sandra Spiroff, Sankar Dutta, Ray Heitmann, Mel Hochster, and Paul Roberts.
For more information, see the minicourse webpage, where there is also a printable version of this announcement.