IMA Public Lecture: How to Create the Universe Out of Nothing: The Math Version
The Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) is pleased to present the Eleventh Annual Arnold Family Lecture featuring Prof. Manil Suri, University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
About the lecture
Picture yourself at a starting point before anything exists—no matter, no cosmos, not even empty space. Your task is to create the Universe, but all you have to work with is, quite literally, ‘nothing.’ How do you proceed? Traditionally, you might expect physics or religion to try and answer this question, but what if you turn to mathematics instead? The resulting thought experiment gives an insightful new way of looking at mathematics—one in which you build the numbers out of nothing, and then, through a playful progression of mathematical creation, are able to arguably design everything else in the Universe!
About the speaker
Manil Suri is a Distinguished University Professor in Mathematics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His research area is finite element analysis. He is the author of three award-winning novels, including The Death of Vishnu, which have been cumulatively translated into 27 languages. He co-authored the play, The Mathematics of Being Human, that has been performed at multiple venues, including the 2015 Joint Mathematics Meetings. He is a former contributing opinion columnist at the New York Times, for which he has written several essays on mathematics. His new book, The Big Bang of Numbers: How to Build the Universe Using Only Math, written under a Sloan Foundation Book Fellowship, will be available for purchase and signing at the reading.
Questions? Contact mathdept@umn.edu or call 612-625-2004.