‘Spaces of Spaces’
Every semester, CAS fellows are challenged to present their research to the other project groups at lunch-time seminars. For the pure mathematicians, having to explain their work to the uninitiated might be considered something of a challenge.
Finnur Larusson is a professor of pure mathematics at the University of Adelaide, Australia. He is at CAS as part of the project Several cComplex Variables and Complex Dynamics.
In his lunch-time seminar ‘Spaces of spaces’, Larusson took the opportunity to talk more generally about his field:
– Pure mathematics is mathematics for its own sake, driven by its own internal forces.
One of its peculiarities is that it has no ongoing controversies over what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’. The concepts in pure mathematics are not easily grasped by non-mathematicians, so Larusson explained his research by reference to films of soap ('minimal surfaces', in mathematical terms).
Published 07 December 2016, 12:00
|
Last edited 26 October 2018, 10:08