Ian Putnam | PIMS - Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences

Professor of Mathematics, University of Victoria

Ian F. Putnam received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1985. He was an NSERC University Research Fellow at Dalhousie University before moving to the University of Victoria where he is currently Canada Research Chair in Operator Algebras and Dynamical Systems in the department of mathematics and statistics. He has received the Israel Halperin Prize and the Andre Aisenstadt prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

He was a member of the PIMS SRP from 1999-2007.

The Symposium is supported by the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences. As part of this year's meeting, we plan to celebrate the 65th birthday of Karl Petersen of the University of North Carolina. We gratefully acknowledge additional...

I'll begin by describing shifts of finite: topological dynamical systems based on some simple combinatorial data. These have played a fundamental role in hyperbolic dynamics. I will then describe a new construction of factors (quotients) of such...

As part of Smale's program for smooth dynamics, David Ruelle gave a definition of a Smale space as (roughly) a topological dynamical system which has a local product structure of contracting and expanding directions for the dynamics. A special case...

Abstract In the 1960's and 70's, mathematical patterns in Euclidean space were discovered which displayed a high degree of order, but which were not periodic. Later, Daniel Shechtman found physical materials (quasicrystals) which can be modeled by...

The Bratteli-Vershik model is a method of producing minimal actions of the integers on a Cantor set. It was given by myself, Rich Herman and Chris Skau, building on seminal ideas of Anatoly Vershik, over 30 years ago. Rather disappointingly and...