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Rankin Lecture 2026: Repellers of random walksAbout this Event
The School of Mathematics and Statistics invites you to
The Rankin Lecture 2026
Repellers of random walks
Professor Marcelo Viana
Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Monday 9th February 2026,
Lecture at 11:00 - 12:00 GMT (in Maths & Stats LT 116)
Light lunch to follow at 12:00 GMT (open to all at the level 3 common room)
The Rankin Lecture 2026, as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series in Mathematics & Statistics, will take you through a tour of the theory of random walks by a world leading expert in the field, with a chance to network over light lunch afterwards.
About the speakerMarcelo Viana is a professor of mathematics and the current director of IMPA - Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics in Rio de Janeiro. His work in the fields of dynamical systems and ergodic theory earned him several academic distinctions, such as Louis D. Scientific Grand Prize from the Institut de France, and the inaugural Ramanujan Prize from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics and the International Mathematical Union. He has mentored 42 doctoral students to date. In addition to his research publications, he has written a handful of textbooks on differential equations, ergodic theory and dynamical systems. Viana is a member of the academies of sciences of Brazil, Chile, and Portugal, and of TWAS - The World Academy of Sciences. He was president of the Brazilian Mathematical Society and vice president of the International Mathematical Union. He led the organization of the 2018 International Congress of Mathematicians in Rio de Janeiro. He writes a weekly column about science in Folha de S.Paulo, Brazil's most prominent newspaper, and is also the author of popularization books in mathematics.
AbstractConsider a sequence of invertible dxd matrices picked at random (independently) according to some probability distribution and multiply them successively. What can be said about the product as the number of factors goes to infinity? In a seminal 1960 paper, Furstenberg and Kesten proved that the norm and the co-norm have well-defined exponential rates of growth that are actually deterministic, i.e., independent of the random choices. They are called extremal Lyapunov exponents. In a recent joint paper with Artur Avila and Alex Eskin we prove that the Lyapunov exponents vary continuously with the underlying probability distribution, relative to a suitable topology. The proof is based on a detailed analysis of the dynamics of the random walk defined on projective space by the probability distribution.
Agenda
?: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Lecture
Info: Lecture Theatre 116 of the Mathematics and Statistics Building
?: 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Light lunch - open to all registered participants
Info: Level-3 common room of the Mathematics and Statistics Building
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Lecture Theatre 116, Mathematics and Statistics Building, 132 University Place, Glasgow, United Kingdom
Tickets
GBP 0.00
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