The Equations: Icons of Knowledge

May 16, 2006
Sander Bais

The mysteries of the physical world speak to us through equations – compact statements about the way nature works, expressed in nature’s language, mathematics. Sander Bais will discuss the equations that govern our world – unfolding in all their formal grace – and their deeper meaning as core symbols of our civilization.

Trying to explain science without equations is like trying to explain art without illustrations. Bais’s work covers the historical, biographical, practical, philosophical, and mathematical traditions of seventeen equations that form the very basis of what we know of the universe today. He strives to convey the transcendent excitement and beauty of these icons of knowledge as they reveal and embody the fundamental truths of physical reality.

These are the seventeen equations that represent radical turning points in our understanding – from mechanics to electrodynamics, hydrodynamics to relativity, quantum mechanics to string theory – their meanings revealed through the careful and critical observation of patterns and motions in nature.

Speaker Details

http://staff.science.uva.nl/~bais/Sander Bais is a theoretical physicist at the University of Amsterdam. My research focuses primarily on problems in theoretical high-energy physics: from quantum field theory to string theory. I have made interesting excursions though, to adjacent fields like condensed matter theory and physics of the early universe. For a general description I refer to the relevant section of the research program of the ITFA. I have a longstanding interest in problems concerning topological defects, like fluxes, domain walls, monopoles, skyrmions, instantons etc. and their interactions. In the article “Broken Symmetry Revisited” we describe what their most important features are and what aspects of these defects have been studied. In the last few years I have been working on a very special type of interactions between defects called “Topological interactions” . In two dimensional physics these lead for example to the realization of anyonic behavior, i.e. the possibility of excitations which exhibit exotic spin and quantum statistics properties. Some simple examples are explained in the article Exotische spin en statistiek eigenschappen (yes, in Dutch!).