30 Apr 2009; Mat-Nat Faculty (UiTø), room A228. Thursday 14:15-16:00

Boris Kruglikov

"Involutivity of relativistic field equations"

In this talk I will discuss the basic equations of general relativity. The first half of my talk will be devoted to discussion of the history of these equations, including the 1915 race between Einstein and Hilbert, and also discussion of physical meaning and implications of the equations. This part will be accessible for the general audience including students.

In the second part, which will be more specialized, I will discuss mathematical meaning and properties of the field equations. In particular, I'll give an overview of my recent short proof of involutivity of field equations, something which was the topic of long correspondence between A.Einstein and E.Cartan in 1929-1931.