2002 Bowen Lectures

The 2002 Bowen Lectures will be delivered by Roger Penrose on October 7, 8 and 9.

Department of Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley, presents

The 2002 Bowen Lectures
Roger Penrose
Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics
Oxford University

Lecture I: "Twistor Geometry and Cosmological Spacetime"
Monday, October 7
2 LeConte Hall - 4:10pm-5:00pm

Abstract for the Series: Twistor theory presents unusual insights into the geometry of spacetime and the nature of physical fields. It also provides valuable pure-mathematical techniques in differential geometry, representation theory, and integrable systems. These lectures will be aimed particularly at those applications of twistor theory of relevance to the geometry and physics of the universe. Lecture I introduces basic twistor geometry and light-ray geometry, relating these, via the classical Klein correspondence, to the structure of Minkowski space and cosmological models. In Lecture II, the twistor representation of massless fields in terms of twistor contour integrals and holomorphic sheaf cohomology will be presented, as will ideas for generalizing this to massive fields using multiple twistor expressions. Curved twistor space ideas will be presented in Lecture III, providing descriptions of anti-self-dual gauge fields and general relativity, and where new "googly" constructions enable the self-dual parts of these fields also to be represented.

Reception in 1015 Evans at 5:15pm after Monday's lecture.

Lecture II: "Twistor Cohomology and Physical Fields"
Tuesday, October 8
10 Evans Hall - 4:10pm-5:00pm

For details see the abstract for the whole series following the announcement for Lecture I on October 7.

Lecture III: "Curved Twistor Space and General Relativity"
Wednesday, October 9
2 LeConte Hall - 4:10pm-5:00pm

For details see the abstract for the whole series following the announcement for Lecture I on October 7.