SEMINAR: Groups and Combinatorics Seminar: Phill Schultz, 4pm Friday 27 July in Weatherburn LT

Speaker: Phill Schultz (University of Western Australia)

Title: The curious incident of the Leningrad mathematicians

Time and place: 4pm Friday 27 Jul 2018, Weatherburn LT

Abstract: The solution of a famous Sherlock Holmes mystery hinges on the fact that none of the characters noticed a dog howling in the nighttime.

Something similar occurred in Leningrad in the 1980s: two issues of the Proceedings of the Steklov Institute contained incompatible theorems about direct decompositions of finite rank torsion-free abelian groups, and no-one seems to have noticed.

I will describe the theorems and try to resolve the mystery.

Past and future seminars may be found at http://www.maths.uwa.edu.au/~glasby/GroupsAndCombinatoricsSeminar/S18.html