Mathematical Logic at the University of Mons-Hainaut

First Maurice Boffa lectures at the University of Mons-Hainaut.

Under the impulsion of some friends of Maurice Boffa, the University of Mons-Hainaut has founded the International Maurice Boffa Lectures. They will be awarded, for the first time, at Thomas Scanlon, from the University of Berkeley.

First Maurice Boffa lecture, by
Thomas Scanlon (Berkeley)
Model Theory of Valued Difference and Differential Fields

This talk is for a general audience. Everybody is welcome; it is part of a program, sponsored by FNRS and CNRL in model theory at the University of Mons-Hainaut, from May 27 to June 10, 2004.

This event will be the occasion of a meeting of the contact group in mathematical logic around model theory and its applications to algebra, on May 27 and 28, 2004.

10h30 : Angus Macintyre (Edinburgh)
The Complex Exponential and the Zilber-Schanuel Exponential

(14h30 : First Maurice Boffa Lecture)

16h45 : Bruno Poizat (Lyon)
A la recherche de la structure intrinsèque de l'Univers

11h : second Maurice Boffa lecture :
Thomas Scanlon (Berkeley)
Quantifier elimination for the relative Frobenius

Angus Macintyre (Edinburgh)
The Complex Exponential and the Zilber-Schanuel Exponential:
I will discuss the differences between these two exponentials.

Bruno Poizat (Lyon)
A la recherche de la structure intrinsèque de l'Univers:
A selftransformation of a structure is a permutation of its base which permutes its parametrically definable sets and relations. The universe of a structure is formed by the sets and relations which are definable in it with parameters. Two universes are similar if they have a common elementary extension (the notion of elementary extension does not depend of the structure chosen to generate the small universe). We will sudy these notions and will list some problems.

Thomas Scanlon (Berkeley)
Model Theory of Valued Difference and Differential Fields:
From G\"{o}del's Incompleteness Theorem one might conclude that structures from arithmetic have inherently complicated theories. However, the work of Ax, Kochen and Er\v{s}ov (and others) on valued fields demonstrated that $p$-adic fields and their relatives have decidable theories and well-behaved classes of definable sets. Later work showed that these properties persist for these fields in even richer languages. We discuss some of these expansions and show how these model theoretic uniformities may be used in number theory.

Thomas Scanlon (Berkeley)
Quantifier elimination for the relative Frobenius:
We give a (reasonably) detailed proof of a quantifier elimination theorem for theory of the Witt vectors of an algebraically closed field considered as a difference ring with the relative Frobenius as the distinguished automorphism. [This work is joint with B\'{e}lair and Macintyre.]

Accomodation (list of hotels)
The conference hotel is HOTEL INFOTEL downtown;
The youth hostel downtown (AUBERGE DE JEUNESSE), recently build, provides cheap and comfortable accomodation in double rooms.

Please email any correction, comment or suggestion about these pages to C. Michaux