Fwd: Seminar_MSB 241_22nd Dec_Thursday_3 PM-
Resmi Suresh
From: Chemical Engineering IITM <seminar...@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Dec 20, 2016 at 12:03 PM
Subject: Seminar_MSB 241_22nd Dec_Thursday_3 PM-
To: cheresearchscholarsiitm <cheresearchscholarsiitm@googlegroups.com>, chfaculty <chfa...@iitm.ac.in>, Office Chemical <chof...@iitm.ac.in>
Details of the seminar:
Title: Beauty in Mathematics and Physics
About the speaker:
Venkat Venkatasubramanian
Samuel Ruben-Peter G. Viele Professor of Engineering
Center for the Management of Systemic Risk
Department of Chemical Engineering
Columbia University
New York, NY 10027
Date: 22.12.2016
Time: 3:00 PM
Venue: MSB 241
Tea: 2:45 PM ( MSB 129)
Abstract:
The concept of beauty is generally associated with the arts, especially
the fine arts such as painting, sculpture, and architecture, where any
object that gives us immense pleasure upon visual perception is deemed
beautiful. This notion has been generalized
to other artistic endeavors as well such as music and literature. Even
though beauty is hard to define or quantify, and is often quite
subjective, we generally have a sense of what is beautiful and what is
not, be it a painting, a poem, or a person. It is
a vitally important quality that is highly desired in any art form.
While its significance in the arts is quite apparent, does beauty matter in the sciences, particularly in mathematics and physics? Can we say that some equation, proof, or theory is beautiful? If so, what do we mean by that and why? What constitutes beauty in mathematics and physics?
As it turns out, quite surprisingly, that
not only beauty matters a great deal in mathematics and physics as it
does in the arts, it also has similar connotations. In particular, there
is an intimate relationship between beauty
and symmetry that continues to play a crucial role in our fundamental
theories of space, time, and matter.
In this talk, I will explore the aforementioned questions using well known equations, proofs, and theories from mathematics and physics. I will also discuss how some of the great mathematicians and physicists – Boltzmann, Dirac, Einstein, Erdős, Hardy, Heisenberg, Poincare, and Weyl, came to depend on the notion of beauty to guide the development of their ideas and insights.
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