Colloquium - Rachel Skipper

Date: December 9, 2021

Time: 4:00PM - 5:00PM

Location: BLOC 117

Speaker: Rachel Skipper

Description:
Title: From simple groups to symmetries of surfaces
Abstract: We will take a tour through some families of groups of historic importance in geometric group theory, including self-similar groups and Thompson’s groups. We will discuss the rich, continually developing theory of these groups which act as symmetries of the Cantor space, and how they can be used to understand the variety of infinite simple groups. Finally, we will discuss how these groups are serving an important role in the newly developing field of big mapping class groups which are used to describe symmetries of surfaces.