The Lars Ahlfors Centennial Conference

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The proposal is to fund the participation of mathematicians, based in the United States, in the Lars Ahlfors Centennial Conference in Helsinki in August, 2007. Ahlfors was the first Fields Medallist; his work has influenced and, indeed, foreshadowed a major portion of modern mathematics. The emphasis of this conference is to share the current intellectual streams which have their source in or were redefined by Ahlfors' work --- the areas of expertise of the speakers include partial differential equations and geometry, 3-dimensional topology, iterations, quasiconformal mappings, percolations, probabilistic number theory, string theory and too many areas of analysis to list. We expect that this interaction will provide a cross-fertilization of the modern manifestations of these ideas which are worthy of their roots.It is astounding that near half of the Fields medallists have published papers based on, or strongly influenced by, Ahlfors' work. The conference has been organized so that participants can better understand why his work is so central and how, through renewed interaction, it will continue to exert a major influence on the future direction of mathematics.