Van Winter Memorial Lecture in Mathematical Physics: What is Quantum Field Theory?

Speaker: Nathan Seiberg, Charles Simonyi Professor,  Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

Abstract:  We will review the status of Quantum Field Theory (QFT) as the language of physics. We will stress that despite enormous success and a lot of progress, we still do not have a completely satisfactory presentation of the theory. In particular, QFT is not yet mathematically rigorous. This will lead us to discuss the symmetries of QFT as associated with topological operators. This modern view has generalized our ideas of symmetries and has led to many new results.

The Van Winter Memorial Lecture in Mathematical Physics honors the memory of Clasine van Winter, who was a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Physics and Astronomy from 1968 until her retirement in 1999.  The annual lecture is jointly sponsored by the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Physics and Astronomy.