University of Michigan
Department of Mathematics
Winter 2001

Special Combinatorics/Algebraic Geometry Seminar
March 8, 5:10-6:00, 3866 East Hall





Hurwitz numbers and moduli spaces

Michael Shapiro

Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm)



Abstract

We shall discuss a relation between classical problem of counting ramified coverings of the sphere with fixed branch points and theory of moduli spaces of complex genus g curves with n marked points. One of the applications is a new proof by A.Okounkov and R.Pandharipande of the famous Witten's conjecture.