Place: 4274 Chamberlin (refreshments will be served)
Speaker: Melanie Matchett Wood, UW Department of Mathematics
Abstract: We are familiar with the prime numbers as those integers which cannot be factored into smaller integers, but if we consider systems of numbers larger than the integers, the primes may indeed factor in those larger systems. We discuss various questions mathematicians ask about how primes may factor in larger systems, talk about both classical results and current research on the topic, and give a sense of the kind of tools needed to tackle these questions.