Title: Coloring games on graphs and words

Abstract: We all know that four colors suffice for the proper coloring of any planar map. But we do not know how many more colors are needed if the map is colored in a course of the game between two players, with only one of them trying to minimize the color palette. This innocently-looking modification led to many deep results and challenging open problems. I will tell a story about this coloring game, and its influence on the development of other topics, seemingly far from traditional graph coloring.

Jarosław Grytczuk is currently a professor of mathematics at the Warsaw University of Technology. His scientific interests include graph coloring, combinatorics on words, and number theory. He published over 70 papers with more than 50 co-authors containing many challenging open problems. He also explores the fascinating connections between mathematics and music and art.