CMI Silver Jubilee Lecture

K. Madhava Sarma Memorial Distinguished Lecture

David Mumford, Brown University, U.S.A.

Mathematical Models of the Heavens: from yugas to chaos

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Abstract:

Modeling the complex world is the central goal of applied math and one problem has been a constant challenge for over three millennia — the motion of the sun, moon, planets and stars. It is striking to see how certain ideas have persisted while others were dropped as religious beliefs have changed and data has been measured with ever greater precision. We will give a panoramic view of this scheme dipping into the mathematics characteristic of each era.