General instructions

The purpose of our colloquium is twofold: firstly, it is to provide an inspiring overview of a specific field of mathematics, secondly, it is to bring together students and staff from the entire department and to serve as the proverbial waterhole where contacts are made and maintained. The first purpose is for you to fulfil while the second is an intended side effect of a good colloquium.

The lecture should be geared towards a general mathematical audience. We ask you therefore to keep to general ideas and/or concrete examples and avoid technical definitions. It is virtually impossible to make a colloquium talk too easy. It will be appreciated if you can place the topic of the lecture in a historical context. We encourage you to focus more on the field at large and less on your own contributions. A suggested guideline is to make the first fifteen minutes accessible to an undergraduate, while keeping the subsequent fifteen minutes accessible to our graduate students. If possible, we ask you to include in your talk a brief outlook into future developments and current open questions. We have no doubts about your experience as a lecturer, but we nevertheless recommend you to read the following texts which can provide new perspectives also to the seasoned lecturer.

P.R. Halmos, How to talk mathematics

faculty.washington.edu/heagerty/Courses/b572/public/HalmosHowToTalk.pdf

John McCarthy, How to give a good colloquium

www.ams.org/profession/leaders/workshops/gcoll.pdf

Practical instructions

The colloquiums are Wednesdays at 15:15. Please plan at most 50 minutes for your presentation. It will be followed by roughly 10 minutes of questions and discussion.

In order to advertise the colloquium, we ask you to send us an abstract 3 weeks in advance. The abstract should reflect the content of the talk. Preferably, it should be clear from the abstract that the talk is aimed at a broad audience. Please refrain from assuming too many prerequisites from the audience. Should you assume prerequisites beyond undergraduate level that are not briefly explained during your talk, please clarify this in your abstract. Please avoid technical terms and try to keep it at a level understandable to a general audience of mathematicians. If there are any interesting review articles on the topic it would be useful if you could refer to them in your abstract.

The colloquium will be held in either the Hörmander or Gårding lecture hall. Both rooms have a blackboard, a projector and an overhead projector. If required it is possible to use the projector and blackboard in parallel. The projectors only have HDMI-cables. If you need an adapter or if you need to borrow a computer for the talk, please let us know.