SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY LECTURES The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics

 

Speaker: Professor Manindra Agrawal, N. Rama Rao Chair Professor, Dean of Faculty Affairs

Indian Institute of Technology,  Kanpur

 

Chair: Professor S.N. Maheshwari former Professor, IIT, Delhi

 

Mathematics, at one level, is just a manipulation of abstract symbols and has no connection with reality. However, when these symbols are mapped to real quantities, this manipulation acquires a meaning, and leads to dramatic effects: almost all scientific achievements can be traced to this association of abstract symbols with real quantities. This talk will consider examples of three different ways in which mathematics has influenced our lives: (i) understanding and predicting natural phenomenon, (ii) manipulating nature, and (iii) design of non-natural phenomenon