No.120 Seminar ： Geometry and Physics
- Atsushi KANAZAWA (The Hakubi Center for Advanced Research)
- 2016/11/15 4:30pm
- The Hakubi Center for Advanced Research (Research Administration Building 1F)
- Japanese(This seminar is open for students and researchers at Kyoto Univ.)
Summary
As an introduction to modern mathematics, I will speak about recent interactions between geometry and physics. According to Galileo Galilei, “Mathematics is the alphabet with which God has written the Universe.” Our language, say English, is made in such a way that it describes our daily life very well. However it is not good enough once one tries to understand non-daily phenomena. For example, one needs quantum mechanics to understand micro phenomena and Einstein’s relativity to understand macro phenomena. Therefore, learning mathematics is, in a sense, learning a new language and gaining a new point of view of our universe. On the other hand, mathematics used in quantum mechanics and general relativity was created more than 100 years ago, and not much is known about the recent progress in mathematics (used in modern theoretical physics). In this lecture, I will briefly review the history of mathematics and physics, and introduce some recent topics in geometry inspired by theoretical physics.
* Before Dr. Kanazawa’s talk, Dr. Hemant Poudyal (5th batch) will give a small talk on the internationalization efforts with Sikkim University in India.