On Wednesday October 10, IFF director Margaret Wertheim is doing a conversation at the New York Academy of Sciences, entitled “The Mystery of Our Mathematical Reality”. Ms. Wertheim will be in conversation with renowned string theorist Dr. Sylvester James Gates, one of our nation’s few African-American professors of physics. The event is moderated by Steve Paulson, host of NPR’s acclaimed show To the Best Of Our Knowledge, and will later be broadcast there. The discussion will delve into Eugene Wigner’s famous comment about “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in nature,” and what does it mean that we find math so widely and fruitfully embodied in material things
The event is part of the NYAS series “What is the Nature of Reality?”