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Annual lecture series in memory of Prof. Aryeh Dvoretzky

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In 2009, the Einstein Institute of Mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem established an annual lecture series in memory of Professor Aryeh Dvoretzky (1916-2008).

Each lecturer will deliver two lectures. It is suggested that one lecture be accessible to the university scientific community at large (colloquium-style) and the additional lecture may be more specialized and of interest to professional mathematicians and specialists.

Past lectures

• 2011      Prof. Ofer Zeitouni    (Weizmann Institute of Science and the University of Minnesota).      March 31st and April 5th, 2011.      Abstracts

  Lecture 1, March 31st:      Branching random walks, Gaussian free fields and thick points: second moments

  The distribution of the location of the rightmost particle of branching Brownian motions in dimension 1 is described by the Kolmogorov-Petrovskii-Piscounov equation. Bramson's work (1982) showed that probabilistic methods, and specifically a variant of the second moment method, are extremely effective in analyzing the solution. Recently, a surprising link between branching Brownian motions and the behavior of the maximum of certain Gaussian fields has been established, shedding light on the fluctuations of the maximum. I will describe this common thread in a discrete setup, starting with one of Dvoretzky's favorite objects: multiple points for Brownian motion.

  Lecture 2, April 5th:      Recursions, Branching Random Walks, and tightness

  I will describe the role that recursions play in the analysis of maxima of branching random walks and of Gaussian random fields; other applications will be pointed out.

• 2010      Prof. Y. Sinai    (Princeton).      April 22nd and 25th, 2010.      Abstracts

  1st lecture, April 22nd:      Navier-Stokes System and Renormalization Group Method

  Renormalization group method is used in dynamics for constructing solutions with special properties. We shall discuss the general problem of constructing solutions with singularities in finite time in equations of fluid dynamics using this method. So far it was successful for dealing with complex-valued solutions which do not satisfy energy inequality.

  2nd lecture, April 25th:      Decay of Fourier Modes in Solutions of the 2-dimensional Navier-Stokes System

  Fourier modes decay exponentially in the case of periodic boundary conditions. In more general cases the behaviour depends on the boundary conditions. The most difficult case is the unit square with Dirichlet boundary conditions. I shall explain the difficulties and some methods how to overcome them.

Prof. Dvoretzky was one of the founding fathers of the institute. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the Hebrew University in 1941, under the supervision of Michael Fekete. Dvoretzky was appointed Professor of Mathematics at the Hebrew University in 1951, and was the first alumnus of the Hebrew University to become a full professor in it.

He was a leading analyst and probabilist and had contributed greatly to the development of Israeli mathematical research, including functional analysis, mathematical statistics, probability, game theory and Higher-dimensional algebraic geometry.

He was deeply involved in university administration, and among his contributions were Dean of the Faculty of Sciences (1955) and Vice President of the Hebrew University (1959).
He was the founder and first director of the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University.

He also served as chief scientist for the Ministry of Defense.

For his many achievements, he received the Israel Prize for Exact Sciences in 1973.

Later he became president of the Israeli Academy of Sciences (1974), of which he was one of the founding members, as well as serving as president of The Weizmann Institute of Sciences (1985-1988).

External links

• Aryeh Dvoretzky (1916-2008) / Israel Journal of Mathematics 167 (2008).
• Obituary / Joseph Yahav, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. IMS Bulletin, Volume 37, Issue 7, p.13.
• Haaretz May 18th, 2008
• Aryeh Dvoretzky, 1916 - 2008 / The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
• Aryeh Dvoretzky / Oberwolfach photo collection
• Aryeh Dvoretzky / The Mathematics Genealogy Project