Event time:
Thursday, March 8, 2007 - 11:30am to Wednesday, March 7, 2007 - 7:00pm
Location:
431 DL
Speaker:
Andrew Putman
Speaker affiliation:
Chicago
Event description:
The Torelli group is the subgroup of the mapping class group of a surface
which acts trivially on the surface’s first homology group. Despite the
pioneering work of Birman, Johnson, and many others numerous basic
questions about it remain open. I will begin by describing some history
and background, and then I will discuss a new (infinite) presentation of
the Torelli group whose generators and relations have simple topological
interpretations.