In the course of my visit from September 22 until October 22, 2002, I gave four talks:
- `Periodic continued fractions and torsion on the jacobians of hyperelliptic curves' (NWO-OTKA workshop at the Lorentz Center at Leiden),
- `Quadratic number fields with small regulator' (Intercity Seminar at Groningen),
- `An introduction to continued fractions' (to undergraduate and graduate students at Leiden),
- `Some questions suitable for the Monthly' (Intercity Seminar at CWI, Amsterdam).
I completed a paper `Torsion on Elliptic Curves and Periodic Continued Fractions' and made significant advances in research on and writing of its successor, which is to deal with analogous issues in genus two.
As one would expect, I benefited significantly from the ability to
interact directly with a number of my colleagues (among whom Rob Tijdeman, Hendrik Lenstra, Bas Edixhoven, Peter Stevenhagen, Bart de Smit, Jan-Hendrik Evertse) with various research insights coming from incidental remarks I overheard as well as from questions put to me (not to mention the useful library at the Math Institute). Of course my experience here was materially enriched by the happenstance of my being able to attend the Stieltjesweek (from which I learned a great deal both of the material as such and from the manner and quality of the presentations) and subsequent workshop on Explicit Algebraic Number Theory (which entailed my interacting with a yet wider group of mathematicians). My extensive conversations with Rob Tijdeman, and to a lesser extent Pingzhi Yuan, were instructive both from my meeting questions that had not heretofore intrigued me and, as always, from giving me opportunity to reflect upon my explanations of my emphases and interests.