## Month: June, 2017

### Souvenirs from Haifa

The “Multivariable operator theory workshop at the Technion, on occasion of Baruch Solel’s 65th birthday”, is over. Overall I think it was successful, and I enjoyed meeting old and new friend, and seeing the plan materialize. Everything ran very smoothly – mostly thanks to the Center for Mathematical Sciences and in particular Maya Shpigelman. It was a pleasure to have an occasion to thank Baruch, and I was proud to see my colleagues acknowledge Baruch’s contribution and wish him the best.

If you are curious about the talks, here is the book of abstracts. Most of the presentations can be found at the bottom of the workshop webpage. Here is a bigger version of the photo.

I will not blog about the workshop any further – I don’t feel like I participated as a mathematician. I miss being a regular participant! Luckily I don’t have to wait long: Next week, I am going to Athens to participate in the Sixth Summer School in Operator Theory in Athens.

### Introduction to von Neumann algebras, Lecture 7 (von Neumann algebras as dual spaces, various topologies)

Until this point in the course, we concentrated on constructions of von Neumann algebras, examples, and properties of von Neumann algebras as algebras. In this lecture we turn to study subtler topological and Banach-space theoretic aspects of von Neumann algebras. We begin by showing that every von Neumann algebra is the Banach-space dual of a Banach space. For this to have any hope of being true, it must be true for the von Neumann algebra $B(H)$; we therefore look there first.

(The reference for this lecture is mostly Takesaki, Vol. I, Chapters 2 and 3).

### Introduction to von Neumann algebras, Lecture 6 (tensor products of Hilbert spaces and vN algebras; the GNS representation, the hyperfinite II_1 factor)

In this lecture we will introduce tensor products of Hilbert spaces. This construction is very useful for exhibiting various operators, and, in particular, it will enable us to introduce new von Neumann algebras. In particular, we will construct the so called hyperfinite $II_1$ factor.