A Brief History of Going in Circles: From Belts to BottGraduate Colloquium

by David Aretz (MPIM)

Wednesday Dec 17, 2025, 3:15 PM → 4:45 PM Europe/Berlin

Endenicher Allee 60/1-016 - Lipschitzsaal (Mathezentrum)

Abstract:

This talk explains why rotating yourself twice is more mathematically respectable than rotating once, why vector bundles repeat every 8 dimensions like a bad sitcom plot, and what all of this has to do with electrons being antisocial. There will be K -theory, Bott periodicity, and a belt. It will all make sense in the end. Probably.

Website of the Hausdorff Colloquium