The History of the Stone-von Neumann Theorem

Jonathan Rosenberg, UMCP

This will be a historical/expository talk for a very general audience, basically an expanded version of a talk I gave in Baltimore for a special session in honor of the 100th birthdays of Marshall Stone and John von Neumann. I will discuss the origins of the Stone-von Neumann Theorem, what Stone and von Neumann did, and how it has influenced mathematics in the second half of the 20th century.