Simons Lecture Series

The Department of Mathematics annually presents the Simons Lecture Series to celebrate the most exciting mathematical work by the very best mathematicians of our time. The format of this lecture series has evolved since its inception in 1999, and now includes two weeks of lectures— one in pure mathematics and the other in applied mathematics— given each spring.

We are grateful to our good friend Jim Simons for providing the financial backing of these lectures.

2025 Lectures

Maryna Viazovska (Pure Mathematics)

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

April 29, April 30, May 1, 2025

4:30pm, Room 2-190

Reception: 4:00pm, 2-290

The Sphere Packing Problem

Lecture 1:
General overview
Lecture 2:
Random sphere packings with symmetries
Lecture 3:
Ideal lattice packings and subconvexity bounds

Thomas Vidick (Applied Mathematics)

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

May 12-14, 2025

4:30pm, Room 2-190

Reception: 4:00pm, 2-290

Surprises in Quantum Complexity Theory

Lecture 1:
Some complexity challenges from quantum information
Lecture 2:
Entanglement, interactive proofs, and approximability
Lecture 3:
Entanglement, error-correcting codes, and proofs

Simons Lectures Over the Years

2025: Maryna Viazovska, Thomas Vidick

2024: Elon Lindenstrauss, Lenka Zdeborova

2022: Bhargav Bhatt, Cynthia Dwork

2020: (postponed) Bhargav Bhatt, Cynthia Dwork

2019: June Huh, Alexander Barvinok

2018: Stephen Boyd, Sylvia Serfaty

2017: Yuval Peres, Martin Hairer

2016: Michael P. Brenner, Maryam Mirzakhani (cancelled due to illness)

2015: Leslie Greengard, Laure Saint-Raymond

2014: Daniel Spielman, Ben Green

2013: Emmanuel Candès, Raphaël Rouquier

2012: Alexander Lubotzky, László Lovász

2011: Steven Strogatz, Manjul Bhargava

2010: Peter Winkler, Andrei Okounkov

2009: Étienne Ghys, Robert Shapire

2008: Peter Teichner, John Conway

2007: Terry Tao, David Donoho

2006: Akshay Venkatesh, Yves Couder

2005: Noga Alon, Nigel Hitchin

2004: Wendelin Werner

2003: Grigory Perelman

2002: Robert MacPherson

2001 Fall: Peter Shor

2001 Spring: Laurent Lafforgue