MARK KAC SEMINAR

introduction	talks	archive	contact	location

Introduction

The `Mark Kac seminar on Probability and Physics' is a monthly meeting held in Utrecht, The Netherlands, between probabilists and statistical physicists. The range of topics covered includes:

• Interacting particle systems
• Ergodic theory and dynamical systems
• Gibbs random fields and percolation
• Disordered media
• Quantum mechanics and quantum probability
• Stochastic processes and large deviations

The seminar originally started in 1977 with informal meetings of a small group of Dutch mathematicians and physicists discussing topics in their common field of interest. Following a suggestion by P.W. Kasteleyn, one of the founding fathers of statistical physics in the Netherlands, the seminar was named after Mark Kac in 1985. Mark Kac had close contacts with many Dutch scientists and was a regular visitor until his death in 1984. His work is at the very core of the area in mathematical physics that the seminar tries to cover.

Since the academic year 1985/86, there is every spring a main speaker invited to give series of usually three lectures. The main speakers and topics of their talks are:

1986: Geoffrey Grimmett (Interacting particle systems and random networks)
1987: John T. Lewis (LDP in statistical mechanics and its application to the Boson gas)
1988: Bernard Souillard  (Electron and wave propagation in disordered media)
1989: Burkhard Kümmerer (Non-commutative probability)
1990: Herbert Spohn (Large scale dynamics of interacting particle systems)
1991: Christian Maes (Stochastic cellular automata)
1992: Erwin Bolthausen (Large deviations with applications)
1993: Reinhard Werner (Large deviations and mean field systems)
1994: Enzo Olivieri (Metastability)
1995: Jennifer Chayes (Percolation)
1996: Domokos Szasz (Ergodicity of the billard system)
1997: Gordon Slade (Lace expansion)
1998: Senya Shlosman (Metastability)
1999: Jeffrey Steif (Ergodic properties of Gibbs states)
2000: Michael Baake (Quasicrystals)
2001: Wendelin Werner (Critical exponents, conformal invariance and planar Brownian motion)
2002: Olle Häggström (Percolation and Spatial Interaction)
2003: Kurt Johansson (Random matrices)
2004: Charles-Edouard Pfister (On the Nature of Isotherms at First Order Phase Transitions)
2005: Bertrand Duplantier (Conformal Random Geometry & Quantum Gravity)
2006: Alain-Sol Sznitman (Random motions in random media)
2007: Thierry Bodineau (Phase coexistence for lattice models)
2008: Roberto Fernandez (Cluster expansions for hard-core systems)
2009: Franz Merkl (What are crystals?)
2010: Yvan Velenik (Ornstein-Zernike theory and apprlications)  

Organizers of the Mark Kac Seminar: 

• Frank den Hollander and Hans Maassen (until 2000)
• Aernout van Enter and Remco van der Hofstad (2000-2010)
• Roberto Fernandez and Wouter Kager (since 2010)