MATH Seminar

Title: A Brief History of Ramsey Theory
Seminar: General Colloquium
Speaker: Steven La Fleur of Emory University
Contact: Steve Batterson, sb@mathcs.emory.edu
Date: 2014-03-21 at 4:00PM
Venue: MSC W303
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Abstract: Ramsey's theorem asserts that within large enough systems, complete disorder is impossible. This talk will be focused around the history of Ramsey theory, as well as Ramsey himself. We will discuss some of the motivating questions in the early 20th century leading up to the pivotal result by F.P. Ramsey in 1927, as well as the effect that this result has had on mathematics, and specifically combinatorics, since then. We will look at some of the variations of the initial problem that have been considered throughout the last century and partially assess the current state of affairs for these topics. Part of the talk will also investigate F.P. Ramsey himself, where we will briefly mention some of his other contributions to subjects such as mathematical logic (which was his interest when he stated his now famous theorem), as well as economic theory and probability.