Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

Gromov revolutionized the study of finitely generated groups by showing that an intrinsic metric on a group is intimately connected with the algebra of the group. This point of view has produced deep applications not only in group theory, but also topology, geometry, logic, and dynamical systems. We will start at the beginning of this story with the definitions of these metrics on groups and how notions from classical geometry can be generalized to this context.  The focus will be on how the "hyperbolic groups" exhibit geometric and dynamical feature reminiscent of the hyperbolic plane and its isometries.