A.O.L (Oliver) Atkin, a noted mathematician of international fame and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago, died on December 23, 2008 at the age of 83. He made lasting contributions to the theory of numbers: the theory of modular forms (Atkin-Lehner operators, congruences, modular forms for non-congruences groups), theory of partitions, and cryptography (Schoof-Elkies-Atkin Algorithm), among others. He was also a pioneer of the use of computers in mathematics. He was born in England and worked at Bletchley Park in World War II. He completed his doctorate at Cambridge in 1952 under John Littlewood. He joined the faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1972. Atkin remained mathematically active until his death.
The annual Atkin Memorial Lecture, which I have helped organize since 2009, is aimed at remembering Oliver Atkin's lasting contributions to mathematics and the University of Illinois. Since 2010 the lecture has been accompanied with a weekend workshop. The following is the list of the Atkin lecturers, the topics, and the speakers of the workshops.
2017: Yuri Tschinkel (NYU and Simons Foundation), Topic: Height zeta functions. Other confirmed speakers of the workshop: Margaret Bilu (Orsay), Tim Browning (Bristol), Alex Eskin (University of Chicago), Alex Gorodnik (Bristol), Brian Lehmann (Boston College), Daniel Loughran (Manchester), Lilian Matthiesen (KTH, Stockholm), Sho Tanimoto (Copenhagen), Tony Varilly-Alvarado (Rice), and Takehiko Yasuda (Osaka). Funded by the National Science Foundation and UIC.
2016: Henri Gillet (UIC), Topic: Comparing cohomology theories for algebraic varieties. We did not have an Atkin workshop this year.
2015: Alireza Salehi-Golsefidy (UC San Diego), Expansion in Linear Groups. Other speakers: Remi Boutonnet (UCSD), Elena Fuchs (UIUC), Alex Furman (UIC), Alex Gamburd (CUNY), Harald Helfgott (CNRS Paris VI/VII), Alex Kontorovich (Rutgers), Igor Rivin (Temple), Nicolas de Saxce (Hebrew University of Jerusalem). Funded by the National Science Foundation and UIC.
2014: Shouwu Zhang (Princeton), The Arithmetic of Elliptic Curves and Special Values of L-Functions. Other speakers: KestutisCesnavicius (MIT), David Hansen (Jussieu), Robert Harron (University of Wisconsin), Andrei Jorza (Notre Dame), Kazuya Kato (University of Chicago), Yifeng Liu (MIT), Christopher Skinner (Princeton), Ander Steele (Calgary), Wei Zhang (Columbia). Funded by the National Science Foundation and UIC.
2013: Akshay Venkatesh (Stanford), Cohen-Lenstra Heuristics. Other speakers: Thomas Church (Stanford), Jordan Ellenberg (University of Wisconsin), Wei Ho (Columbia), Nathan Kaplan (Harvard), Andy Putman (Rice), Arul Shankar (IAS), Frank Thorne (South Carolina), Jacob Tsimerman (Harvard), Craig Westerland (Melbourne), Melanie Matchett Wood (University of Wisconsin). Funded by the National Science Foundation and UIC.
2012: William Stein (University of Washington), Elliptic Curves over Q square root of 5. Other speakers: Jennifer Balakrishnan (Harvard), Jonathan Bober (University of Washington), John Cremona (Warwick), Lassina Dembele (Warwick), Noam Elkies (Harvard), EdrayGoins (Purdue), Matthew Greenberg (Calgary), Richard Pinch (Cheltenham), Kenneth Ribet (Berkeley), William Stein (University of Washington), Nike Vatsal (UBC), John Voight (University of Vermont). Funded by the National Science Foundation and UIC.
2011: Winnie Li (Penn State), Noncongruence Modular Forms and Galois representations. Other speakers: Matthew Emerton (Northwestern), Toby Gee (Northwestern), Jerome W. Hoffman (LSU), Kiran Kedlaya (MIT and UCSD), Ling Long (Iowa State), Tong Liu (Purdue). Funded by the National Science Foundation and UIC.
2010: Steve Kudla (University of Toronto), Arithmetic Cycles on Shimura Varieties and Automorphic Forms. Other speakers: Ben Howard (Boston College), Kartik Prasanna (Michigan), Ulrich Terstiege (Harvard), Tonghai Yang (Wisconsin). Funded by UIC.
2009: Ken Ono (UW, Madison), Mock Modular Forms. Funded by UIC.