一小时邀请报告简介之二十：宏观数学

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一小时邀请报告简介之二十：宏观数学
（转自2006年国际数学家大会官方网站）

Plenary Lecture: Percy Deift
Macrosopic Mathematics

“The level of order in nature is such that we can do little to improve it”. So says Percy Deift in the abstract for his plenary lecture to be delivered at the forthcoming International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid. This statement stems from the laws of thermodynamics, laws which fascinate many for their universal nature, and for their independence from both the macroscopic and microscopic scale, since the principles of thermodynamics are fulfilled in all physical systems in a state of equilibrium. It is perhaps because of their universal nature that the laws of thermodynamics have become so popular. Most of us are familiar with the first principle: “Energy is neither created nor destroyed; it is simply transformed”, which has become a popular saying.  

Would something similar be possible in mathematics? After all, mathematics too are “universal”: prime numbers are always prime numbers, and a theorem proved always remains proven. However, every mathematical problem is a problem sui generis, with its own special characteristics. Even so, as professor Deift points out, a new pattern has begun to emerge from a broad cross-section of mathematical problems, and this is what he will be talking about in his lecture. This pattern reveals in such problems a universal character that resembles to some extent the universality of thermodynamics.

“The list of these problems is long, varied, and growing” says this mathematician at the Courant Institute in New Cork, who speaks in terms of “macroscopic mathematics”. Not only problems of applied mathematics figure on this list; in this “new” mathematics there is room for problems belonging to pure mathematics, such as the Riemann hypothesis. Who knows, perhaps one day a phrase like: “you know, the real part of every non-trivial zero in Riemann’s zeta function is ½” could also become a popular saying.

Percy Deift was born in Durban (South Africa) in 1945. He graduated in Chemical Engineering in his native city in 1970. In 1971, he also graduated in Physics at Rhodes (South Africa), and in 1976 he obtained his PhD in Mathematical Physics at Princeton (USA). Since 1988 he has been a professor at the Courant Institute in New York. He has most recently received the 1997-199 Special Creativity Award from the National Science Foundation, and was one of the three winners of the George Polya Prize in 1998 and a Guggenheim Fellow in 1999-2000.

Speaker: Percy Deift
Title: Universality for Mathematical and Physical Systems
Date: Wednesday, August 23rd: 11:45-12:45