Wednesday, July 11, 2001  2:00PM

Yosemite Conference Room, 3L, HP Labs Palo Alto

Hendrik W. Lenstra, 2000-2001 HP-MSRI Visiting Research Professor will speak on

Escher and elliptic curves

Abstract 

Elliptic curves form one of the hottest topics in arithmetic algebraic geometry. Applications of elliptic curves range from a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem to the design of secure cryptosystems. In the lecture we present, as a novel application of elliptic curves, a mathematical analysis of Escher's lithograph `Print Gallery'.

Host: Gadiel Seroussi  

About the speaker

Professor Hendrik W. Lenstra, Jr. is the HP-MSRI Visiting  Research Professor for the 2000-2001 academic year.
Lenstra, who holds appointments at the University of California at Berkeley, and Universiteit Leiden in the Netherlands, is widely regarded as the world's premier algorithmic number theorist. He is responsible for two of the most famous algorithms in 20th century number theory: the LLL lattice basis reduction algorithm (along with his brother, Arjen Lenstra, and László Lovász) and the elliptic curve factoring algorithm.

During the 2000-2001 academic year, Lenstra has divided his time between MSRI (Mathematical Sciences Research Institute) in Berkeley, where he has worked closely with postdoctoral students in a major research effort in algorithmic number theory, and HP Labs, where he has consulted on problems in computational number theory, error correcting codes, cryptography, finite fields, elliptic curves, analysis of algorithms, complexity and operations research.

Lenstra received his Ph.D. at the University of Amsterdam in 1977. He is the author of more than 140 papers and an editor of numerous journals. He has received several major awards for his pioneering work, most recently the Spinoza award from the Dutch government.