Date and Time: 4:00 - 4:55pm, Monday, Feb. 18, 2008 Room: 121 Little Hall Refreshments: At 5:00 pm in LIT 339   OPENING REMARKS by George Andrews President Elect - American Mathematics Society

Abstract: Euler introduced the now called Eulerian polynomials as a basis for his extension of the Bernoulli Summation Formula due to his mentor. Further extensions, interpretations and rediscoveries have been made since, but it took two hundred years to have those polynomials penetrate the combinatorial and Computer Science world. Today they serve as the basic reference for all the multivariable statistical distributions defined on certain Weyl groups.

 ^* Dominique Foata is one of world's leading combinatorialists. He wrote his thesis in 1965 under the great master Marcel-Paul Schutzenberger. Foata has done fundamental work on many aspects of combinatorics - permutation statistics, q-calculus, rook theory, and free monoids, to name a few. In recognition of his contributions, he was awarded the Scientific Prize of Union des Assurances de Paris in 1985 and Doistau-Blutel Foundation Prize by the Academie des Sciences, Paris in 1986. He has been Professor at the University of Strasbourg since 1965.

This years Ulam Colloquium is part of the Special Program in Algebra, Number Theory and Combinatorics 2007-08