Svetlana Jitomirskaya, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, and a professor at the University of California, Irvine, gave an academic report entitled “Treating small denominators without KAM” at the academic lecture hall of Fan Sun Building under the Chen Institute of Mathematics’ “Chern Lecture”. Professor Chen Yulu, President of Nankai University, met with Svetlana Jitomirskaya after the lecture session and exchanged views on scientific research, discipline construction and other topics.

Over 200 faculty and students from Nankai University, Tiangong University and Tianjin University of Finance and Economics listened to the wonderful report delivered by Svetlana Jitomirskaya.

In the report, Svetlana Jitomirskaya first talked about mathematics in Newton’s time, and believed that Newton’s main mathematical discovery was the Taylor Series.

Subsequently, Svetlana Jitomirskaya reviewed the research history of celestial mechanics systems and talked about the problem of small denominators.

She also gave basic examples of the role of small denominators.

At the end of the report, Svetlana Jitomirskaya introduced the quasi-periodic Schrödinger operator. A small denominator problem similar to the macroscopic celestial mechanics system also occurs in this basic model of quantum mechanics. Many mathematicians and physicists have made important contributions in this regard.

After the keynote speech, Svetlana Jitomirskaya interacted with the teachers and students present, answered their questions, and had a group photo with them.

Background:

Svetlana Jitomirskaya is a professor at the University of California, Irvine, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences. She was a Plenary Speaker at the 2022 International Congress of Mathematicians. In 2020, she received the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics, becoming the first female scientist to independently receive this honor since 1959. She received the first Ladyzhenskaya Prize in Mathematical Physics in 2022 in recognition of her contributions to the study of Schrödinger operator spectrum theory.

The “Chern Lectures” is the highest-level series of lectures organized by the Chern Institute of Mathematics, and is also set up in honor of Mr. Chern Shiing-shen, a master of mathematics. It aims to spread scientific ideas, promote the development of science, particularly mathematics, and enable mathematical science to play a greater role in social and economic development.

(Edited and translated by Nankai News Team.)