Geometry and Physics; Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

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Abstract:There have been interactions between mathematics and physics.One important example is the interaction between the theory of general relativity and Riemannian geometry. Other important examples include interactions between Yang-Mills gauge theory and connections on principal bundles, Higgs bosons and Higgs bundles (and Hitchin fibrations), string theory and algebraic geometry. Indeed, string theory has revolutionized the field of algebraic geometry, in particular, the enumerative algebraic geometry related to the moduli space of curves, and the Hitchin fibrations have also unexpectedly been used to prove the fundamental Lemma in the celebrated Langlands program in the theory of automorphic forms and representation theory.The conference ``Geometry and Physics: Atiyah80" will review the most recentdevelopments in such interactions with talks by leading experts from around the world.The marriage between mathematics and physics has been both long lastingand fruitful. Many important fields of modern mathematics have been directly motivated by applications in physics and mechanics,and physics can not be described accurately and effectivelywithout mathematics. Indeed, mathematics has played a crucial role in formulating properly and establishing rigorously physics theories, and in turn,developments in physics has provided mathematics with new motivations and unexpected problems. All these interactions inspired the famous physicist Eugene Wigner, a Nobel Laureate, to make the celebrated statement "The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematicsin natural sciences".This conference will also features a public event: The Higgs boson: what, why, how?