Derived categories were introduced and developed by A. Grothendieck and his student J.-L. Verdier in the early sixties. A. Grothendieck needed them to formulate and prove the extensions of Serre's duality theorem which he had announced at the International Congress in 1958. Starting from this moment derived categories have attracted the attention of many mathematicians. At the beginning of the seventies, Grothendieck-Verdier's methods were adapted to the study of systems of partial differential equations by M. Sato and M. Kashiwara. Derived categories have now become the standard language of microlocal analysis. Through Brylinski-Kashiwara's proof of the Kazhdan-Lusztig conjecture, they have penetrated the representation theory of Lie groups and finite Chevalley groups.
Derived categories are irreplaceable in the study of representation theory of algebras and in algebraic geometry. Moreover, they constitute a base for noncommutative algebraic geometry. In particular, it is important to understand when two abelian categories have equivalent derived categories. Here the Hochschild (co)homology plays the role of a very subtle invariant that frequently can be used to separate different derived equivalence classes. Moreover, the Hochschild (co)homology is in fact the foundation of the homology theory of algebras that is used in the study of extensions of algebras, deformation theory and others.
The conference "Hochschild (co)homology and derived categories" is an official International Congress of Mathematicians 2022 (ICM 2022) Satellite conference. The ICM is the most significant meeting in pure and applied mathematics worldwide, and one of the oldest scientific congresses. ICMs are organized every four years by the International Mathematical Union in partnership with the Local Organizing Committee from the host country. The ICM 2022 will be held in St Petersburg, Russia, 6 - 14 July 2022.