Mathematics Colloquia and Seminars

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Studying (exceptional) semisimple Lie groups Jaques Tits asked whether it was possible to find geometric interpretations for the groups (and for what was known to be their BN-pair). He did finally come up with the answer himself and developed the notion of a building - and with this opened up a beautiful area of geometry. In this introductory talk on buildings I will try to convince you of the beauty of the subject. Emphasis will be made on definitions and (low dimensional) examples.