Algebraic Geometry Learning Seminar

UT Austin, Summer 2016

11-1, Mondays and Thursdays
RLM 9.166

This is a learning seminar organized by Tom Oldfield (toldfield@math.utexas.edu). You can find here some electronic notes, taken during the seminar by Arun Debray.

We'll meet twice a week, and talks should aim to be an hour long. The room will be available for a second hour if speakers wish to use the additional time, to provide more detailed proofs, examples, or material from starred sections that time would otherwise not allow for.

This aim of this seminar is to get a good understanding of the tools required to understand and undertake modern algebraic geometry. We'll cover the material in Ravi Vakil's online textbook, "The Rising Sea", at a rate of around one chapter a week. Working through Vakil's notes makes it very easy to write talks, since the notes themselves are very discursive and provide a lot of intuition. However, the notes include relatively few proofs so speakers should attempt to provide proofs in as much detail as time allows for.

The technical details of algebraic geometry are notoriously difficult, so those who want to get a firm understanding of the details should aim to do at least some of the exercises from the relevant material outside of the seminar each week. Those who just want to get an overall picture of the field and a flavour for the kinds of problems it tackles are of course more than welcome to simply attend the talks.

The schedule of talks is as follows: