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Excursions into the Mathematical Universe: To Infinity and Beyond
20. November, 2024,16:00 - 17:00
A series of popular science lectures titled “Excursions into the Mathematical Universe.” The lectures are primarily intended for students of secondary schools in the Primorska region, but they are also open to the general public. Researchers and university lecturers will present ancient and modern mathematical concepts and their applications in various fields of science, natural sciences, and social sciences in an accessible way.
To Infinity and Beyond
We can all agree that the concept of infinity plays an important role in our society and our own philosophy, but what exactly is “infinity”? In this talk, we will uncover the definition of infinity as used in mathematics and delve into some of its forms and consequences. From showing that there are several infinities to partitioning a pea and reassembling it to create the sun, mathematical infinity has many interesting properties, some of which may be counterintuitive or paradoxical.
At the end of the 19th century, mathematicians were bewildered by the emergence of paradoxical results, leading to a foundational crisis in mathematics. In an attempt to resolve these issues, Hilbert proposed his famous program (Hilbert’s program) in 1920, aiming to formalize all of mathematics on a solid foundation. However, this program was shown to be unattainable by Gödel’s results published in 1931. In the second part of the talk, we will focus on explaining how it can be shown that certain (mathematical) statements can be neither proven nor disproven using the common foundational rules of mathematics.
About the lecturer: René Rodríguez Aldama was born in 1994 in La Piedad, Michoacán, Mexico. In 2016, he earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics from the Michoacán University of Saint Nicholas of Hidalgo (UMSNH), Morelia, Mexico. Two years later, he completed a master’s degree in pure mathematics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and UMSNH, where his mathematical interests included set theory, logic, and topology. In 2022, he obtained a PhD in mathematics from the University of Primorska. Since 2022, he has been a researcher at the Faculty of Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Information Technologies and at the Andrej Marušič Institute. His current research interests include algebra, coding theory, combinatorics, and cryptology.
(The lecture will be held in English.)
Further below, you are kindly invited to read and view the following materials related to the event:
The invitation with the program is available at this link.
Event materials are available at this link.
A recording of the event is available at this link.
Photos from the event:
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