Susanne Pumpluen, Anne Taormina and John Barrett
The London Mathematical Society (LMS) is the major UK learned society for mathematics. The Society's activities include publishing journals and books, providing grants to support mathematics and organising scientific meetings and lectures. Founded in 1865, the LMS is marking its 150th Anniversary in 2015.
To celebrate this important year, on Wednesday 4 November the school hosted a LMS Colloquium. Professor Anne Taormina (Durham University) was invited to give a talk and participants were encouraged to stay on after for cheese and wine.
Title: "New Moonshines"
Abstract: In 2009, an observation by three Japanese theoretical physicists triggered a keen interest in links between finite groups and a certain class of functions known to Number Theorists as `Mock Modular Forms', reminiscent of the mathematical community's excitement in the early days of Monstrous Moonshine. Six years on, these connections are still being investigated, raising a flurry of questions whose answers will require mathematical creativity. In this talk, I will describe the 2009 observation, now referred to as `Mathieu Moonshine', and explain the challenges faced by the theoretical physics community in understanding the origin and meaning of the intriguing link between a specific mock modular form and the representation theory of the sporadic group Mathieu 24. I will also discuss how this phenomenon is related to the geometry of K3 surfaces in a very interesting way, and put Mathieu Moonshine in perspective, as a member of the `Umbral Moonshine' family.
For further celebratory events, visit the LMS webpage.
Posted on Tuesday 10th November 2015