Department of Mathematics
UChicago logo

Annual Lecture Series

Each year, the department sponsors five lecture series:

Adrian Albert Lectures in Algebra

The Albert Lectures are the oldest of the five lecture series. They are named after Abraham Adrian Albert (1905-1972), who received his Ph.D from Chicago in 1928, under the supervision of L.E. Dickson. Albert later returned to Chicago as a member of the faculty, and served for a time as chair of the department and President of the AMS.

See the current and past Albert Lectures here.

Zygmund-Calderón Lectures in Analysis

The Zygmund-Calderón Lectures are named after Antoni Zygmund (1900-1992) and Alberto Calderón (1920-1998). Zygmund was on the faculty of the University of Chicago from 1947 until his retirement in 1980. He received the National Medal of Science in 1986. Calderón was a graduate student in mathematics at the University of Buenos Aires when he met Zygmund in 1948. He became a student of Zygmund's at Chicago, graduating in 1950. He returned as a faculty member from 1959 to 1972 and again from 1975 until his retirement in 1985. The lectures were known as the Zygmund Lectures until Calderón died, at which time they were renamed the Zygmund-Calderón Lectures.

See the current and past Zygmund-Calderón Lectures here.

Charles J. Amick Memorial Lectures in Applied Mathematics

Charles Amick was an applied mathematician at the University of Chicago who died in 1991, at the age of 39. The Lecture Series was begun in 1993 as a means of honoring his painfully brief life.

See the current and past Amick Lectures here.

Unni Namboodiri Lectures in Geometry and Topology

Unni Namboodiri (1956-1981) was a brilliant student of mathematics at the University of Chicago. He died in an automobile accident in December 1981, just a few days after presenting and defending his doctoral thesis Equivariant vector fields on spheres, written under the direction of J. Peter May. The Unni Namboodiri Lecture Series was established in his memory by his family.

See the current and past Namboodiri Lectures here.

Patrick Billingsley Lectures in Probability

Patrick Billingsley (1925-2011) was a long-time member of the mathematics and statistics departments at the University of Chicago who made important research contributions to probability theory and ergodic theory. The Patrick Billingsley Lecture in Probability was established in 2012 in his honor and is an annual lecture by a distinguished probabilist. It is sponsored jointly by the mathematics and statistics departments.

See the current and past Billingsley Lectures here on the statistics department website.