Wednesday 29 October 2025 at 5 pm, for the cycle "Please Don't Delete: Math Dialogues", Prof. Ciro Ciliberto (University of Rome "Tor Vergata") will give a talk titled Enumeration in geometry: a charming millennial history and recent developments.
Abstract: The enumeration of geometric objects that verify certain specific properties is an ancient and venerable topic, which began its history more than two thousand years ago with the well-known Apollonius problem. Enumerative geometry is characterised by dealing with problems that are frequently easy to formulate but equally frequently very difficult to solve. In this talk, I aim to examine part of the very interesting and millennial history of this charming topic and its problems. In recent decades, enumerative geometry has seen the rise of new problems, more difficult than the already complex ones of the past, and has undergone a huge change in perspective and spectacular progress, with the introduction of new ideas and extremely refined mathematical tools that have launched unexpected bridges between different parts of mathematics.
The meeting will take place at the University Library Headquarters - U6 Building Agorà (Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo 1, Milan) University of Milano-Bicocca and will be introduced by Prof. Gianmario Tessitore, Director of the Department.
Speaker Biography
Formerly Professor of Higher Geometry at “Tor Vergata” University, Ciro Ciliberto was born in Naples on 14 October 1950. He graduated in Mathematics from the University of Naples in 1973. Assistant Professor at the University of Naples from 1974 to 1980. Professor of Mathematics at the University of Naples from 1977 to 1978 and of Algebraic Geometry from 1978 to 1980. Extraordinary Professor of Higher Mathematics at the University of Lecce in 1980-1981. Subsequently, he was first extraordinary then full professor of Algebraic Geometry at the University of Naples from 1981 to 1985. Then Professor of Superior Geometry at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. Deputy President of the National Institute of High Mathematics “Francesco Severi” in the years 1990-1995 and member of the Scientific Commission of the same Institute from 1995 to 1999. Director of the Doctorate School in Mathematics at the University of Rome Tor Vergata in the years 1990-1994, and subsequently member of the Scientific Committee of that School. Detached Professor at the "Inter-disciplinary Centre B. Segre" of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in the years 1993-1996. President of the Italian Mathematical Union from 2012 to 2018. Member of the Meetings Committee of the European Mathematical Society since 2013 and President of the aforementioned committee since 2018. Member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the Accademia delle Scienze Fisiche e Matematiche in Naples and the Accademia Gioenia in Catania. Website: https://www.mat.uniroma2.it/~cilibert/
Ciliberto is the author of more than 200 scientific publications. His main area of interest is Algebraic Geometry and the history of the discipline. His main research topics are: projective curves; algebraic surfaces; degeneracy techniques and their applications: families of nodal curves, Noether-Lefschetz theory, extensionality problems, Gauss maps, classification of Fano varieties, linear systems of plane curves and nodal curves on K3 surfaces, obstructions to degeneracy; abelian varieties, curves and their moduli spaces; projective-differential geometry of special varieties, focal properties, secant-defective varieties.
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