Date: Monday, February 15, 2010 Time: 4:00 - 4:55pm Room: FAB 103   Refreshments:  Before the lecture in LIT 339 (Atrium)

Abstract: This talk will introduce q-orthogonal polynomials and will begin with a brief (and I hope compelling) account of their background and history.

In 1975-76, Richard Askey and I extended the ideas of Wolfgang Hahn on orthogonal polynomials arising in the world of q. In a couple of papers, we established a variety of connection coefficient theorems from which various Rogers-Ramanujan identities followed.

In the early 1980's, the discovery of Bailey Chains and their iterative power led to a neglect of q-orthogonal polynomials. Recently the importance of their role has emerged again. The final portion of the talk will be devoted to an explanation of this re-emergence.

 ^* ABOUT THE SPEAKER: George Andrews, one of the world's most eminent mathematicians, is the premier authority in the theory of partitions and q-hypergeometric series. He shot to fame in the 1970s when he discovered Ramanujan's Lost Notebook at the Wren Library in Cambridge University and wrote a series of important papers in Advances in Mathematics in which he explained Ramanujan's spectacular results in the context of current research, and in that process made fundamental improvements as well. He and Professor Bruce Berndt of the University of Illinois are currently "editing" Ramanujan's Lost Notebook in series of volumes, two of which have been published by Springer.

In a long and distinguished career spanning several decades, Professor Andrews has received numerous recognitions, including the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982-82, the invitation to give the Hedrick Lectures for the Mathematical Association of America in 1980, the election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1997, the award of an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Florida in 2002, and the election to the National Academy of Sciences in 2004. He is the current President of the American Mathematical Society.