Jeffrey Harvey, Professor of Physics, Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago
At its most basic level number theory involves properties of the whole numbers we use to count. As physicists have learned to count more and more complicated objects ranging from the quantum states of a conformal field theory to the number of states of a black hole they have had to deal with increasingly sophisticated aspects of number theory. I will discuss these connections between physics and number theory via simple examples and survey some current research directions.