SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMS AND ACTIVITIES

WORKSHOP ON GEOMETRY, DYNAMICS AND MECHANICS IN HONOUR OF THE 60th BIRTHDAY OF J.E. MARSDEN
August 7-10, 2002

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:

A. Bloch, P. Newton, T. Ratiu, S. Shkoller, A. Weinstein

OVERVIEW:
The workshop will be organized along the seven main themes of Professor Marsden's work:

(1) Geometric mechanics
(2) Fluid mechanics
(3) Elasticity and analysis
(4) Numerical algorithms
(5) Relativity and quantum mechanics
(6) Geometric control theory
(7) Dynamical systems

The common thread running throughout is the use of geometric methods which serve to unify these diverse disciplines and help bring a wide variety of scientists and mathematicians together, speaking a language which encourages cross-fertilization. Professor Marsden is a unique figure in this regard as his work has significantly influenced the three distinctly separate communities of mathematicians, physicists, and engineers.
The workshop will bring together the world's leading figures in each of these seven theme areas who will give invited lectures.
In conjunction with the workshop, Springer-Verlag will publish a special volume entitled `Geometry, Dynamics, and Mechanics: 60th Birthday Volume for J.E. Marsden', edited by P. Holmes, P. Newton, A. Weinstein.
Workshop opening: 9 a.m. Wednesday August 7, 2002.
Workshop closing: 5 p.m. Saturday August 10, 2002.

BIOGRAPHY

Jerrold Marsden is a professor of Control and Dynamical Systems at Caltech. He has done extensive research in the area of geometric mechanics, with applications to rigid body systems, fluid mechanics, elasticity theory, plasma physics, as well as to general field theory.

His work in dynamical systems and control theory emphasizes how it relates to mechanical systems and systems with symmetry. He is one of the original founders in the early 1970's of reduction theory for mechanical systems with symmetry, which remains an active and much studied area of research today. His recent research interests also include variational and numerical integration algorithms, especially variational algorithms and discrete mechanics.

In 1965 he graduated from the University of Toronto in Applied Mathematics, got his PhD in Princeton under the guidance of Arthur Wightman and Ralph Abraham in 1968 and joined the faculty at UC Berkeley later that year, where he later became Professor of Mathematics and EECS until his departure for Caltech in 1995. He held positions at Toronto and Cornell for short periods. He was the founding director of the Fields Institute from its inception (around 1989) to 1994.

Amongst his recent honors is the 1990 AMS-SIAM Wiener prize, election to the Royal Society of Canada, 1993, election to the American Academy of Arts and Science, 1997 and the Max Planck research award, 2000.

PRELIMINARY LIST OF SPEAKERS:

Stuart S. Antman (University of Maryland) V.I. Arnold (Steklov Mathematical Institute) Michael Atiyah (North Haugh) Roger Brockett (Harvard University) Alexandre Chorin (UC Berkeley) Michael Dellnitz (University of Paderborn) John Doyle (California Institute of Technology) J.J. Duistermaat (Utrecht University) Arthur Fischer (UC Santa Cruz) P. Garcia Perez (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) Marty Golubitsky (University of Houston) Mark Gotay (University of Hawaii) Victor Guillemin (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Darryl D. Holm (Los Alamos National Lab) Philip Holmes (Princeton University) Tom Hughes (Stanford University) Jim Isenberg (University of Oregon) Boris A. Khesin (University of Toronto) Klaus Kirchgaessner (Universitat Stuttgart) Edgar Knobloch (UC Berkeley)

Nancy Kopell (Boston University) Bertram Kostant (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) P.S. Krishnaprasad (University of Maryland) Mark Levi (Penn State University) Robert Littlejohn (UC Berkeley) Martin Lo (California Institute of Technology) Alison Marsden (Stanford University) Richard Montgomery (UC Santa Cruz) David Mumford (Brown University) Richard Murray (California Institute of Technology) Alan Newell (University of Warwick) Michael Ortiz (California Institute of Technology) Jeurgen Scheurle (Technische Universitat Munchen) William Shadwick (London) Lawrence Sirovich (Mt. Sinai School of Medicine) Jedrzej Sniatycki (University of Calgary) Anthony Tromba (UC Santa Cruz) Alan Weinstein (UC Berkeley)

ACCOMMODATION
A block of rooms for participants have been arranged at the hotels listed below. Please request the Fields Institute rate when booking . Rooms must be reserved before July 7, 2002 to receive the Fields rate.

Days Inn 30 Carleton Street, Toronto, ON, M5B 2E9 Tel: 416 977-6655 Toll Free 1-800-367-9601 (8:30 am- 6pm) (approx. $129/night CDN)

Quality Hotel 280 Bloor Street West Toronto, ON, M5S 1V8 Tel: (416) 968-0010 Fax: (416) 968-7765 (approx. $115/night CDN)

For additional accommodation resources, please see the Fields Housing page

For further information please contact marsden60@fields.utoronto.ca

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