Over the course of about 15 years in the 70's and 80's J.-P. Serre made a conjecture linking certain Galois extensions of the rational numbers to modular forms. This conjecture, recently resolved by Khare-Wintenberger has influenced much of the research in number theory in the last 25 years. Two pieces of work in this area were Ribet's proof that the Shimura-Taniyama conjecture implies Fermat's Last Theorem and Wiles' proof of the Shimura-Taniyama Conjecture. This talk will be an overview of Serre's conjecture, its implications and solution.
R E F R E S H M E N T S
4:00 to 4:25 PM
Kenneth W. Anderson
Memorial Reading Room
