Münster will host the official kick-off event of the series "The 7 Greatest Adventures in Mathematics" on 15 June 2022. The host is the Cluster of Excellence Mathematics Münster - one of the seven locations dedicated to the Millennium Problems from June to November 2022. They are considered the central questions of mathematics. The mathematicians of Technische Universität Braunschweig Timo de Wolff (Speaker of the Board of Die Junge Akademie) and Sebastian Stiller will give a welcoming speech as initiators of the series.

Lecture: Enigmatic and as yet unproven - The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Sarah Zerbes (ETH Zurich)

The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture is one of the most mysterious unsolved problems in number theory. Prof. Dr. Sarah Zerbes will take the audience on a journey through time: She talks about the connections between congruent numbers and elliptic curves, about the surprising discoveries of Fibonacci and Fermat, about the lengthy numerical experiments of the British mathematicians Bryan Birch and Peter Swinnerton-Dyer in the 1970s, and about far-reaching discoveries from more recent research - which still do not fully prove this conjecture.

The lecture will take place in lecture hall S8 in the castle and will be livestreamed. All interested parties are cordially invited.

Reception afterwards in the Orangery of the Botanical Garden. Admission is free, registration is not required.