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Ziwet Lectures

Alexander Ziwet was born in Breslau, Germany, February 8, 1853, of German and Polish ancestry. His early education was obtained in a German gymnasium.  He afterwards studied in the universities of Warsaw and Moscow, one year at each, and then entered the Polytechnic School at Karlsruhe, where he received the degree of Civil Engineer in 1880.  He came immediately to the United States and received employment on the United States Lake Survey.  Two years later he was transferred to the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, computing division, where he remained five years. In 1888 he was appointed Instructor in Mathematics in the University of Michigan. From this position he was advanced to Acting Assistant Professor in 1890, to Assistant Professor in 1891, to Junior Professor in 1896, and to Professor of Mathematics in 1904.1

The Ziwet Lectures were established in 1934 through a bequest from Professor Ziwet, Chair of the UM Department of Mathematics from 1888-1925. He stipulated that his estate “should be used for the promotion of scientific work.” The Ziwet lectures have been one of the most prestigious lecture series in the department.  Following is a list of distinguished mathematicians who have given Ziwet Lectures.

Year Speaker/Organizaton Lecture Title

 

February 19 - 21, 2024

 

Wilfrid Gangbo
  • Poster 
  • Morrey's Theory and Direct Methods of the Calculus of Variations
  • On Differentiability in the Wasserstein Space
  • Hamilton-Jacobi Equations in the Wasserstein Space

 

October 11 - 13, 2022

 

Leonid Polterovich
February 18-19, 2020 Laura DeMarco
  • Poster (pdf)
  • Complex Dynamics and
    Elliptic Curves
April 10-12, 2018 Gunther Uhlmann 
March 15-17, 2016 Percy Deift
March 12-14, 2013 Michael J. Hopkins
January 15-16, 2013

H.-T. Yau

Sept 18-20, 2012 Felix Otto
March 27-29, 2012  Emmanuel Candes
November, 2011 David Eisenbud
March, 2011 N. Trefethen
Nov, 2010 C.H. Woodin
Jan 2010 C. Skinner
Oct 2009 C. Villani
  • What goes on in a plasma?
  • Vlasov-Fokker-Planck: Relaxation with degenerate dissipation
  • Landau damping: relaxation without dissipation 
Apr 2009 J. Tyson
  • How Do Cells Compute
  • Temporal Organization of the Eukaryotic Cell Cycle
  • Mathematical Challenges in Systems Biology 
Nov 2008

I. Karatzas

  • Some Stochastic Control Problems in Mathematical Finance
  • Volatility Stabilization, Diversity and Arbitrage
    Optimal Arbitrage 
Feb 2008 C. McMullen
  • Billiards and Teichmuller Theory
  • Islands on Algebraic Surfaces
  • Topology of Numbers 

Sept 2006

J. Marsden

  • Invariant Manifolds and Coherent Structures
  • Discrete Mechanics, Variational Integrators & Optimization
  • A Plethora of Geodesics on Lie Groups

2003

M. Artin

  

2001

W. Gowers

  

2000

P. Sarnak

  

1997

J. Bourgain

  

1992

R.L. Graham

  

1990

G.A. Margulis

  

1988

K. Uhlenbeck

  

1986

P.D. Lax

  

1984

R.H. Bott

  

1982

S.T. Yau

  

1980

W.P. Thurston

  

1978

E. Bombieri

  

1976

I.M. Singer

  

1974

D. Mumford

  

1970

L.V. Ahlfors

  

1968

M. Atiyah

  

1966

J. Milnor

  

1964

L. Nirenberg

  

1962

I. Kaplansky

  

1960 

J.H.C. Whitehead

 

1958

M. Kac

  

1953

A.M. Gleason

  

1949

R.H. Fox

  

1946

K. Friedrichs

  

1944

C. Chevalley

  

1944 

J.W.T. Youngs

 

1944

P. Erdos

  

1941

S. MacLane

  

1939 

J. von Neumann

 

1938

E. Hecke

  

1937

O. Szasz

  

1936

R.A. Fisher

  

1936

Eduard Cech

  

 

1. Burke A. Hinsdale and Isaac Newton Demmon, History of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1906), pp. 320-321.