IHES in London and Oxford
On January 28 and 29, IHES traveled to Oxford and London with Hugo Duminil-Copin, Permanent Professor at IHES and Fields Medal laureate, for a series of scientific and institutional meetings with its British partners and supporters.
At the initiative of Rama Cont, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and Board Member of IHES Trust UK, the new partner organization of IHES in the United Kingdom, Hugo Duminil-Copin was invited to the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford, where he delivered a scientific talk on his recent work during the probability seminar and presented a public lecture entitled “Can we truly understand by counting?”
In this lecture, Hugo Duminil-Copin introduced fundamental ideas from his research, including “wild randomness,” a concept pioneered by Benoît Mandelbrot in the 1960s, as well as the notions of symmetry and universality phenomena. He illustrated these concepts through the example of self-avoiding walks, a topic on which he made significant contributions during his thesis with Stanislav Smirnov, notably proving a longstanding conjecture of Nienhuis from the early 1980s. This proof is fundamentally based on counting self-avoiding walks of length n for large n, hence the title of the lecture.
“Can we truly understand by counting?” is available on the Oxford Mathematics Youtube Channel.
The following day, IHES visited Qube Research and Technologies (QRT), a key sponsor that recently renewed its support for the Institute. QRT’s funding notably supports the IHES Summer Schools, which are held annually around a different theme and are aimed at early-career scientists, particularly at the doctoral and postdoctoral levels. This year, IHES will exceptionally host two Summer Schools, one on statistical aspects of nonlinear physics, at the other on discrete subgroups of Lie groups, illustrating the success of these scientific meetings that allow young researchers to discover the Institute.
To mark the renewal of this partnership, Hugo Duminil-Copin delivered a lecture on the nature of randomness for over 160 QRT employees, in presence of Pierre-Yves Morlat, Chief Executive Officer, Laurent Laizet, Chief Investment Officer, and Nathalie Mikaeloff, Global Head of Philanthropy and Communication at QRT.
IHES also took advantage of its visit to London to meet with members of the British scientific community, partners and sponsors. The trip to the UK also allowed the Institute to reconnect with the team of Patrick Nédellec, Advisor for Science and Technology, to discuss future outreach initiatives and to plan the official launch ceremony of IHES Trust UK, which is scheduled to take place at the Résidence de France on June 12.
The Institute extends its warmest thanks to all its partners and supporters for their hospitality during this trip.
