Speaker: Yann Brenier
Abstract: It has long been recognized that the Monge optimal transport problem plays an important role in many areas of Mathematics and Science.
Its quadratic version can be elegantly and fruitfully reformulated in the language of Euler's hydrodynamics, which is also true for the Schroedinger equation of Quantum Mechanics according to the Madelung transform.
It turns out that Einstein's gravitation (at least in vacuum) can also be reformulated in hydrodynamic language as a kind of matrix-valued quadratic optimal transport problem. So, we have a rather large panorama on very different fields of Physics through the unifying concept of optimal transport properly generalized.
Biography: Yann Brenier is Directeur de Recherches au CNRS, affected to the Laboratoire de Mathematiques d'Orsay (Universite Paris-Saclay). Specialist of PDEs related to Physics and Mechanics, he established in the late 80's a link between the Euler and the Monge-Ampere equations through the Monge-Kantorovich problem, which turned out to be very influential for the development of optimal transport theory in connection with PDEs and the Calculus of Variations.
He was formerly Directeur de Recherches at INRIA, then professor at Paris 6 and Ecole Normale Superieure (from 1990 to 2000) and finally Directeur de Recherches at CNRS (Universite de Nice and Ecole Polytechnique from 2000 to 2018). He has been invited at ICMS 2002 (Beijing), plenary lecturer at ICIAM 2003 (Sydney) and was awarded the grand prix Ampere de l'Academie des Sciences de Paris in 2022.