The last 20 years have seen many profound results in geometry
and topology proved using Ricci flow. So what is this Ricci flow and why
does it work? I will introduce the Ricci tensor, provide some intuition
for what it detects, and explain some of the basics of Ricci flow.
This talk will be a fairly basic introduction to the subject in
preparation for Andrejs Treiberg's lectures on recent results in the
field.