Ravi Vakil's homepage

I am a Professor of Mathematics at Stanford University, the Robert K. Packard University Fellow in Undergraduate Education (2008-2013), and the David Huntington Faculty Scholar. I'll be the Mathematical Association of America's 2009 Hedrick Lecturer. I have received the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching, an American Mathematical Society Centennial Fellowship, a Frederick E. Terman fellowship, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a National Science Foundation CAREER grant, the presidential award PECASE, and the Brown Faculty Fellowship. I have received the Coxeter-James Prize from the Canadian Mathematical Society, and André-Aisenstadt Prize from the CRM in Montréal. (This may give you a clue that I am Canadian.)

• The Department of Mathematics, including directions. Searchable and printable campus maps. The former shows the math department. Stanford University.
• Some publications and preprints.
• If you are thinking of doing your Ph.D. with me, read this.
• I co-organize:
  • The Algebraic Geometry Seminar.
  • The Berkeley-Stanford Algebraic Geometry Colloquium. (Both are on hiatus in spring 2009 because of the program at MSRI.)

This spring, I am co-chairing the jumbo research semester in algebraic geometry at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley. Last fall, I taught Math 120 (Modern Algebra) and Math 245 (Topics in algebraic gometry: introduction to moduli spaces). Last year, I taught a three-quarter sequence on the Foundations of Algebraic Geometry. Here are course notes from the 2005-06 course. I hope to post a much-revised version of these at some point. Up until Fall 2007, I coordinated the William Lowell Putnam competition at Stanford, and in conjunction with that I ran a weekly problem-solving seminar for talented undergraduates, as well as a Masterclass for experts --- more information here. Here are some older teaching links.

For students (high school and undergraduate)

• I am the faculty advisor for the Stanford Math Circle (for high school students). For more information, or to sign up, click here.
• For high school students: the Stanford Math Circle (see above), the Stanford University Math Camp, the Berkeley Math Circle, the Education Program for Gifted Youth (EPGY), and other summer programs outside the Bay Area.
• Research Experiences for Undergraduates and other information for talented undergrads.
• Fun Math Facts at Harvey Mudd. The canonical mathematical competitions page, by Kiran Kedlaya. Mathematical Mayhem (a journal I co-founded, now part of Crux Mathematicorum). More links here.
• (not just for students) Letters of recommendation.

• Conferences in algebraic geometry.
• The Western Algebraic Geometry Seminar (WAGS).
• Algebraic geometry at Stanford. Click here to find out how to join our mailing list. This is for people thinking of working in algebraic geometry. Interesting doctoral students to talk to: Atoshi Chowdhury, Jack Hall, Yuncheng Lin, Jason Lo, Nikola Penev, Joe Rabinoff, Yu-jong Tzeng, Kirsten Wickelgren, Ziyu Zhang, ....
• Some computer programs of interest to algebraic geometers. Also, Frank Sottile has created some animations illustrating some of the ideas behind the geometric Littlewood-Richardson rule (see preprints 15 and 17 on my preprints page). Click on the picture on the right to see them.

• E-print archive. Mathscinet.
• Great writing.
• I serve on the editorial boards of:
  • Advances in Mathematics
  • Algebra and Number Theory
  • Canadian Journal of Mathematics
  • Canadian Mathematical Bulletin
  • Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra
  • Gokova Geometry and Topology Journal
  • the Mathematical Intelligencer (I edit a column with Michael Kleber)
  • FOCUS (published by the Math. Ass. of America)

Department of Mathematics, Stanford University, Stanford CA USA 94305
phone: 650-725-6284 fax: 650-725-4066 E-mail: vakil[at]math[dot]you-know-where[dot]edu