Rataj Lecture - Sternheimer

  • March 21, 2018
  • 4:30 PM - 5:30 CST
  • Mundelein Center, Room 204
  • Emily Peters, epeters3@luc.edu
  • Open to the public.
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  • Details

    Announcing the next iteration of the Rataj Lecture Series for students in the mathematical sciences. Co-sponsored by the Departments of Mathematics & Statistics and Physics. Reception and refreshments preceding the talk: 3:30 p.m. to 4:15 p.m., Piper Hall.

    Speaker: Daniel Sternheimer, Rikkyo University and Université de Bourgogne

    Title: The power of physical mathematics, for science undergraduates, exemplified by the reasonable effectiveness of deformation theory in physics.

    Abstract:

    Modern science is a Babel tower, the foundations of which are too often forgotten. Yet revolutions may occur when one takes seriously an essential question: *Is it necessarily so?* A successful scientific model is based on assumptions that are sufficient to explain existing data, but may not be necessary. That is the mathematical curse of experimental sciences, since one tends not to argue with success (or with what one has been taught) unless one is forced to. In 1960 Wigner (who in 1963 received the Nobel Prize in physics for *the discovery and applications of fundamental symmetry principles*) marveled about *the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences,* referring mainly to physics. We shall exemplify all this by first explaining how relativity and quantum mechanics can be obtained from the mathematical theory of deformations. Then we describe some main features of the standard model of elementary particles and how it arose from empirically guessed symmetries. Finally we indicate how, questioning its foundations, its symmetries might be obtained from those of relativity using deformations (including quantization), which poses hard mathematical problems and might eventually question half a century of particle physics. A similar approach could be used to try and explain the Dark Universe.