From: gil Kalai <kalai@CS.HUJI.AC.IL>
Subject: JERUSALEM COMBINATORICS 9 May - 17 May, 1993
Originator: dan@symcom.math.uiuc.edu
X-Submissions-To: sci-math-research@uiuc.edu
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
X-Administrivia-To: sci-math-research-request@uiuc.edu
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 12:06:45 GMT


                   JERUSALEM  COMBINATORICS  '93

                            
                         May 9 - May 17, 1993

                          First announcement 

                 FOR MORE INFORMATION and to CONTRIBUTE a TALK
                 contact by e-mail      kalai@humus.huji.ac.il 


An international conference on Combinatorics, its applications and relations 
with other areas of Mathematics, will take place at the Hebrew University of 
Jerusalem from Sunday, May 9, 1993 to Monday May 17, 1993. In the first week 
of the conference there will be 28 invited 45-minute lectures as well as two 
one-hour lectures for especially large audience. 

Sunday May 16, and Monday May 17, will be devoted to eight half-day workshops 
(in two parallel sessions, see below), two special one-hour talks for 
a prepared audience and informal activities.



                         Invited speakers 



Noga Alon,        Helene Barcelo,       Margaret Bayer,       Louis Billera, 
Joan Birman,      Anders Bjorner,   Mireille Bousquet-Melou,   Lynne Butler, 
Paul Edelman,     Paul Erdos,        Zoltan Furedi,      Hillel Furstenberg, 
Mark Haiman,     Shafi Goldwasser,    Anna Karlin,                Jeff Kahn, 
Daniel Kleitman,  Nathan Linial,     Kathleen O'Hara,          Micha Perles, 
Vera Pless,     Karanbir Sarkaria,    Vera Serganova,         Rodica Simion, 
Vera Sos,        Richard Stanley,    John Stembridge,       Sheila Sundaram, 
           Michelle Wachs,                        Asia Weiss. 

                              
                             Workshops
 
Analytic methods in Combinatorics, Organizer: Vitaly Bergelson,

The probabilistic method, Organizer: Eli Shamir, 

Algebraic combinatorics, Organizer: Sheila Sundaram, 

Enumeration, Organizer: Rodica Simion, 

Combinatorics, geometry and topology, Organizer: Joseph Zaks, 

Combinatorics of polyhedra and polyhedral combinatorics, Organizer: 
Peter Kleinschmidt,

Graphs and hypergraphs, Organizer: Ron Aharoni, 

Algorithms and Optimization, Organizer: Ronitt Rubinfeld. 

Each workshop will include 3-6 lectures. Further details and 
the list of invited speakers will be given in the second announcement.


                    Contributed talks


To contribute a talk please send a title and a short abstract not later than
October 15, 1992.

                     Four special talks

There will be two 60-minutes talks especially accessible to a large audience. 
On Sunday, May 9, 18:00 Mireille Bousquet-Melou will talk on POLYOMINOES.
On Wednesday, May 12, 18:00 Vera Sos will talk on UNAVOIDABLE IRREGULARITIES. 


There will be two 60-minutes talks which will assume 10-15 hours of prior 
reading by the interested participants. 
On Sunday, May 16, 8:45, Joan Birman will talk on 
THE COMBINATORICS OF FINITE TYPE KNOT INVARIANTS,
and on Monday, May 17, 8:45, Hillel Furstenberg will talk on 
ERGODIC THEORY AND COMBINATORICS. 

The background material will be provided by e-mail on request.
Tutoring via e-mail will be provided starting October 1, 1992.
Tutoring for Birman's talk will be given by Ted Stanford,
e-mail ts@math.columbia.edu. 
Tutoring for Furstenberg's talk will be given by Vitaly Bergelson, 
e-mail: vitaly@function.mps.ohio-state.edu.

               Hotel, social events, excursions, etc.
 
We have booked rooms in the Jerusalem Sonesta hotel, which is a 10-minute walk 
from the university. The cost is 47$/54$ for a single/double room. 

There will be a reception on Monday, May 10 at 17:30. The conference dinner 
will be on Thursday, May 13. Details will be given later. 

On Wednesday, May 12, we will have a morning excursion to the old city of 
Jerusalem. The plan for Friday afternoon and Saturday is not yet determined. 

The night of Saturday May 8 is a holiday ``Lag Baomer''. Many bonfires
(some huge) are expected. We may do an informal bonfire for interested
participants, stay tuned.


                     Organizing committee
 
Noga Alon (Tel Aviv), Helene Barcelo (Tempe), Anders Bjorner (Stockholm),
Gil Kalai (Chair, Jerusalem) and Edna Wigderson (Jerusalem).


INFORMATION:   

Gil Kalai, Department of Mathematics, Hebrew University,
Jerusalem, ISRAEL, e-mail kalai@humus.huji.ac.il. 
phone: 972-2-584729 (office) 972-2-536301 (home) 972-2-630702 (fax)

Helene Barcelo, Department of Mathematics, Arizona State University,
Tempe, Arizona, USA, e-mail helene@rosie.la.asu.edu
phone : 602-965-3551 (office) 602-491-4188 (home)



          JERUSALEM COMBINATORICS   9-17 MAY 93

        BACKGROUND MATERIAL FOR JOAN BIRMAN'S TALKS

       THE COMBINATORICS OF FINITE-TYPE KNOT INVARIANTS

                Organized by Ted Stanford   
     
              e-mail: ts@math.columbia.edu       

     Do NOT hesitate to e-mail Ted Stanford on any question and problem.


1. J. S. Birman, "New points of view in knot and link theory". This is a
new paper, which Prof. Birman just completed. It will appear in the
Research-Expositopry section of the Bulletin of the AMS. It's about the
latest developments, and covers the material Prof. Birman wants 
to discuss in her talk. The combinatorial problems are  interesting and 
non-trivial, and if anyone wants to work on them that will be useful.
We will supply xerox copy of this paper. For those e-mail 
kalai@humus.huji.ac.il.

2. de la Harpe, Kervaire and Weber, "On the Jones Polynomial",
L'Enseignement Mathematique Volume 32 (1986), p. 271-335. This is a
self-contained and lucid account of the algebra and combinatorics which
underlies the Jones polynomial. So, it predates the material in (1) above,
but postdates that in (3) below.

3. Thistlethwaite, "Knot tabulations and related topics", in ASPECTS OF
TOPOLOGY, Editor Jones and Kronheimer, London Math Soc. Lecture Notes #93,
Cambridge Univ. Press 1985. This is a good review of the mathematics before
Jones.

All of those are partially expository, but all have plenty of references
which will help the interested reader to learn more.





          JERUSALEM COMBINATORICS   9-17 MAY 93

      BACKGROUND MATERIAL FOR HILLEL FURSTENBERG'S TALKS

              ERGODIC METHODS IN COMBINATORICS

              Organized by Vitaly Bergelson
             home 614-436-4004.
           work 614-292-1180.
          e-mail  vitaly@function.mps.ohio-state.edu
            DO NOT HESITATE TO CONTACT VITALY!!!





  1. Hillel Furstenberg, Reccurence in ergodic theory and combinatorial number
     theory, Princeton University Press, 1981. Chapters I and II.
   

  2. Hillel Furstenberg, Poincare recurrence and number theory,
     Bull. of AMS. 5(1981), 211-234. 

  
  3. Vitaly Bergelson,  Ergodic Ramsey Theory, in Logic and Combinatorics,  
     S.G. Simpson, ed. Contemporary Mathemtics Vol. 65, American Math. Soc. 



  4. Vitaly Bergelson, A density statement generalizing Schur's 
     theorem.Journal of Combinatorial Theory (Series A), Vol.43, 1986, 338-343.


 As for the order of reading,the best is the following:
Start with the introduction to the book - ref. 1., continue with refs 2. and 
3. then read the first, second and third chapters of ref. 1. Ref. 4. can be 
read anytime in between. It gives a rather easy example of the method. 



----------------------------------------------------------------------

ADDITIONAL READING


Hillel Furstenberg and Benjamin Weiss, Topological dynamics and combinatorial
number theory, J. d'Analyse Math. 34(1978), 275-291.

Hillel Furstenberg, Yitzchak Katznelson and Benjamin Weiss, Ergodic theory 
and configurations in sets of positive density in : Mathematics of Ramsey 
Theory (Nesetril and Rodl, eds.) Springer-Verlag 1990.

Hillel Furstenberg, Nonconventional ergodic theorems' in: Proceedings 
of Symposia in pure math., vol.50, 1990, pp. 43-56.

Other chapters in Furstenberg's book. 











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