PIMS - UBC Math Distinguished Colloquium: Eriko Hironaka

In this talk, we discuss the following question first popularized in the 1980s by the then startling new computer renderings of the Mandelbrot set. Given a rational map from the Riemann sphere to itself, how does the behavior of the map near the forward orbits of the critical points determine the rational map itself? This circle of ideas, developed by Douady-Hubbard, Thurston, Milnor and others draws from classical ideas in complex analysis, topology and algebraic geometry. We will give a brief survey, and state some recent results and open questions

Speaker Biography:

Eko Hironaka obtained her PhD at Brown University in 1990 with a thesis entitled Abelian Coverings of the Complex Projective Plane Branched along Configurations of Real Lines. She completed postdoctoral positions at Stanford University; the Max‐Planck‐Institute for Mathematics; the Institute des Hautes Etudes; MSRI, and the University of Toronto; before spending 19 years in research and teaching at the Florida State University. In 2015 she became the Senior Editor of the AMS book program.