Buekenhout Geometry

September 20-21, 2012 - Ghent, Belgium

An international conference on "Buekenhout Geometry" was held in Ghent (Belgium) on Thursday September 20th and Friday September 21st. Organizers were Bernhard Muehlherr, Jef A. Thas and Hendrik Van Maldeghem

The conference was organized in honour of Francis Buekenhout on the occasion of his 75th birthday and focussed on geometry, combinatorics and group theory related to the work of this distinguished mathematician. To name a few topics: Buekenhout-Metz unitals, Buekenhout-Shult spaces, Buekenhout diagrams, Buekenhout geometries.

The programme was as follows.

Thursday September 20, Lecture Room "Emmy Noether", S25, Campus "De
Sterre", Krijgslaan 281.

9:00 Coffee and thee
9:50 Welcome
10:00 Arjeh Cohen (Eindhoven): "Riemann surface models and regular maps"
10:55 Coffee break
11:10 Antonio Pasini (Siena): "Non-projective embeddings of generalized quadrangles"
12:10 Bernhard Muehlherr (Giessen): "Tits-indices for affine buildings"

13:00 Lunch break

15:00 Dimitri Leemans (Auckland): "Geometries constructed from the Suzuki simple groups"
15:55 Coffee break
16:10 Koen Thas (Gent): "From buildings to hyperstructures, and back"
17:10 Pierre-Emmanuel Caprace (Louvain-la-Neuve): "Specimens from a zoology of simple groups"

19:30 Social Dinner

Friday 21 September 2012, Lecture Room "Emmy Noether", S25, Campus "De
Sterre", Krijgslaan 281.

9:00 Coffee and thee
9:30 Ernest Shult (Kansas): "On 'Tweaking' Classical Theorems"
10:25 Coffee break
10:45 Jef Thas (Gent): "Non-linear embeddings of affine planes in projective spaces"
11:45 Peter Cameron (London): "Geometries, chamber systems, and designs"

12:45 Lunch break

14:30 Hans Cuypers (Eindhoven): TBA (To Buekenhout in Admiration; 3-Transposition, Buildings and Algebra)
15:25 Coffee break
15:45 Hendrik Van Maldeghem (Gent): "Twisted A2 and E6"
16:30 James Hirschfeld (Sussex): "Curves over Finite Fields"

Pictures

Click here to see some pictures of the event.

Registration

Please register for the conference by September 15th simply by sending an email to Hendrik (hvm@cage.UGent.be).

Cost

There is no conference fee. Hotel prices in Ghent vary roughly from 65 EUR to 100 EUR for single rooms, and from 80 EUR to 110 EUR for a double room (per night). There are also a number of bed&breakfasts available. More details can be found on the list of hotels.

Support

There is some limited support for young people, so feel free to ask hvm@cage.UGent.be.

Social dinner

There will be a dinner on Thurday night in honour of Francis and Monique. If you want to attend this dinner, please send an email to Hendrik (hvm@cage.UGent.be) no later than September 15. The details will be sent later, but we estimate the cost between 50 and 60 EUR per person.

Travel information

Click here.

Looking forward to seeing you in Ghent soon,

The organizers,