Event Description
Ron Perline, PhD, Drexel University
Abstract: Soliton theory (or completely integrable systems) was one of the major discoveries in mathematical physics in the 20th century. This is (essentially) the 50th anniversary of a series of seminal papers describing the structure of the first important equation "officially" discovered to be in the completely integrable category: the Korteweg-deVries equation. I will describe some aspects of the important papers of Miura, Kruskal, Greene, Zabusky, and Gardner. I will also discuss another "path to integrability" which almost beat KdV in terms of the time-line of research. |