Ramanujan Auditorium,  IMSc,  Chennai

Tuesday 02nd July 2013

1400 -- 1500	T E Venkata Balaji "Imagine a sky filled with stars most of whom you cannot see"
		chair: G Youvaraj  	medium: projector + chalk

		Abstract: Though transcendental numbers like e and pi (like stars) almost fill up the real line
		(likened to the sky), we can't list most of them explicitly in a satisfactory manner.
		Even the question whether a given real number is transcendental is not answered
		for many naturally arising numbers, like Euler's constant and the value of Riemann's
		zeta function at 3. The talk is aimed to indicate a few proofs of transcendentality
		to show how many areas of Mathematics are beautifully involved in such questions,
		and also to show how little we know about these numbers, thereby driving the point of
		view that their study has been and remains one of the most fundamental frontiers of Mathematics
		beyond which teem a myriad of unanswered mysteries.