Department of

# Mathematics

Seminar Calendar
for events the day of Wednesday, January 13, 2016.

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events for the
events containing

Questions regarding events or the calendar should be directed to Tori Corkery.
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Wednesday, January 13, 2016

4:00 pm in 245 Altgeld Hall,Wednesday, January 13, 2016

#### The flexible-rigid spectrum of symplectic and contact geometry

###### Strom Borman (Stanford University)

Abstract: Symplectic and contact structures arose historically from geometric methods of studying phase spaces in Hamiltonian dynamics. These geometric structures have no local invariants and many questions about these structures can be reduced to algebraic topology. Despite this flexibility, they do have global invariants and their Hamiltonian dynamics exhibit quantifiable rigidity properties. Understanding this spectrum between flexibility and rigidity is a driving factor in the development of modern symplectic and contact geometry. In this talk I will discuss this spectrum as well as some of my recent work on both the flexible and rigid sides. View talk at https://youtu.be/LTKuCQ6LFgs