Date: Monday, May 7, 2006 Time: 4:00 - 5:00pm Room: LIT 121   Refreshments:  After the lecture in LIT 339

Abstract: In this talk, I will give an introduction to some recent work in set theory, whose goal is a theory of complexity of classification problems in mathematics, and discuss its connections with aspects of dynamical systems and in particular rigidity phenomena in the context of ergodic theory.

 ^* Alexander Kechris received his Ph.D. at UCLA in 1972 under the direction of Yiannis Moschovakis. In 1974 he joined the Caltech faculty. He is the recipient of the 1978-82 Sloan Fellowship, a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2003 Carol Karp Prize (Assoc. Symbolic Logic), and he holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Athens.