Mathematics

The fundamental theorem of Vassiliev invariants gives a one to one correspondence between Vassiliev invariants (knot invariants extended to singular knots with an extra skein relation) and functions on chord diagrams. I will show the proof of this theorem which took a whole new knot invariant, the Kontesivich integral, to prove one direction. This talk will pair well with my talk last term about the Kontesivich integral.