The Clifford Lectures
Since 1984, the Mathematics Department at Tulane University has hosted the annual Clifford Lectures. This week-long series of talks by a distinguished mathematician is accompanied by a mini-conference featuring speakers selected by the Clifford Lecturer.
Upcoming Lectures
Spring 2026 Clifford Lectures: Polytopes
Speaker: Jesús De Loera (University of California, Davis)
Topic: Convex polytopes, discrete geometry, and optimization.
Dates and additional details regarding the mini-conference will be announced soon.
Alfred Hoblitzelle Clifford
Alfred Hoblitzelle Clifford joined Tulane University in 1955 as the head of the Mathematics Department at Newcomb College, serving until its merger with the Arts and Sciences Mathematics Department.
An analyst by training, Clifford soon became a pioneer in the algebraic theory of semigroups. His landmark two-volume work, The Algebraic Theory of Semigroups (1961, 1967), co-authored with G.B. Preston, became the definitive text on the subject in the West.
In the early 1980s, Professor Clifford made a generous donation to the department, establishing an endowment to fund the annual lecture series that bears his name. Following his death in 1992, the department continues to honor his legacy through these lectures.
Past Clifford Lecturers
2026: Jesús De Loera (University of California, Davis)
Lectures on convex polytopes, discrete geometry, and optimization (Spring 2026).
2025: Martin Hairer (EPFL / Imperial College London) Fields Medalist
Lectures on Stochastic Analysis and PDE (Spring 2025).
2024: Ken Ono (University of Virginia)
"The Web of Modularity"
2022 (Fall): M. Gregory Forest (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
"Mathematical insights into an emerging paradigm in biology"
2022 (Spring): Reinhard Schultz (University of California, Riverside)
"Group actions and surgery on manifolds"
2019 (Fall): Laure Saint Raymond (École Normale Supérieure de Lyon)
"Rotating fluids: effects of topography and viscosity"
2019 (Spring): Tomasz Mrowka (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
"Applications of gauge theory to the topology of three manifolds and maybe combinatorics"
2017: Randall J. LeVeque (University of Washington, Seattle)
"Hyperbolic PDEs, Software, and GeoHazard Applications"
2016: Pierre van Moerbeke (Université catholique de Louvain and Brandeis University)
"Random Matrices, Combinatorics and Tiling Problems"
2015: Michel Brion (University of Grenoble)
"Algebraic Groups: Structure and Actions"
2013 (Fall): Peter Constantin (Princeton University)
"Local and Nonlocal, Deterministic and Stochastic Evolution Equations"
2013 (Spring): Chi-Wang Shu (Brown University)
"Numerical Methods for Convection Dominated Partial Differential Equations"
2012: Shmuel Weinberger (University of Chicago)
"Quantitative and Applied Topology"
2011: Christopher Fuchs (Perimeter Institute)
"SIC Representations of Quantum States"
2010 (Spring): Richard Stanley (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
"Lattice Point Enumeration"
2008 (Fall): Bernd Sturmfels (University of California, Berkeley)
"Tropical Algebra"
2008 (Spring): Samson Abramsky (University of Oxford)
"Information Flow in Physics, Geometry, Logic and Computation"
2007: Eitan Tadmor (University of Maryland)
"Computational and Analytical Strategies in Nonlinear Time-Dependent Problems"
2006: Not held
Postponed due to Hurricane Katrina.
2005: Jonathan Borwein (Dalhousie University)
"Experimental (Computational) Mathematics - and Its Philosophical Implications"
2004: Yakov Eliashberg (Stanford University)
"Symplectic Field Theory"
2003: T. J. Pedley (Cambridge University)
"Theoretical Fluid Mechanics in Biology"
2002: Sergei N. Artemov (City University of New York)
"Explicit Logic for Computer Science"
2000: Robert Friedman (Columbia University)
"Lie Groups, and String Theory"
1999: Alexandre J. Chorin (University of California, Berkeley)
"Optimal Prediction"
1998: Peter Bickel (University of California, Berkeley)
"The Method of Sieves in Non and Semiparametric Statistics"
1997 (Fall): Peter Kronheimer (Harvard University)
"Four-Dimensional Geometry and Symplectic Topology"
1997 (Spring): Spring Clifford Conference
Conference focusing on Partial Differential Equations.
1996 (Fall): Paul Fife (University of Utah)
"Mathematical Issues in the Dynamics of Phase Transitions"
1996 (Spring): Dan Voiculescu (University of California, Berkeley)
"An Introduction to Free Probability Theory"
1995: Peter Sarnak (Princeton University)
"General Overview of Spectral Problems Coming from Arithmetical Manifolds"
1994: In Memory of Alfred H. Clifford
Special Conference on Semigroup Theory and Its Applications.
1993: Persi Diaconis (Harvard University)
"Geometry and Randomness"
1992: Nigel Hitchin (University of Warwick)
"Flat Connections and Their Applications"
1991: Sylvain Cappell (Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences)
"Singular Spaces and Intersection Homology"
1990: Haim Brezis (Université de Paris VI)
"Liquid Crystals"
1989: Charles Peskin (Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences)
"Mathematical Biology"
1988: Clifford Taubes (Harvard University)
"Moduli Spaces and Mapping Spaces: Topology and P.D.E."
1987: Saharon Shelah (Hebrew University)
"Non-Structure Theory: How to Build Many Complicated Structures"
1986: William Thurston (Princeton University) Fields Medalist
"Three Dimensional Manifolds"
1985: S. T. Yau (University of California, San Diego) Fields Medalist
"Function Theory on Complete Manifolds with Non-Negative Ricci Curvature"
1984: Charles Fefferman (Princeton University) Fields Medalist
"The Uncertainty Principle"
