About the College
Fields Medalist Shing-Tung Yau delivers annual McKnight-Zame lecture on "The Geometry of Inner Space"
Credit: Jan Michael Kratochvil
Yau, who currently serves as William Caspar Graustein Professor of Mathematics at Harvard, is one of the most celebrated living mathematicians. His work in algebraic and differential geometry has had a profound influence on important topics in physics including string theory and relativity. Yau’s lecture on his recent book, The Shape of Inner Space, described his groundbreaking mathematical work on the curving of space within a closed vacuum.
“I wanted to write this book to give people a sense of how mathematicians think and approach the world,” he said. “I also want people to realize that mathematics does not have to be a wholly abstract discipline, disconnected from everyday phenomena, but is instead crucial to our understanding of the physical world.”
Yau explained how the Calabi-Yau spaces he helped to prove with geometry also play a pivotal role in string theory, the unified theory of physics that assumes all particles are composed of tiny vibrating strings. String theorists assume that spacetime has ten dimensions — the three spatial dimensions that we know, plus time — and six “extra” dimensions curled into miniscule Calabi-Yau spaces.
“Some extremely intriguing, as well as powerful, mathematics has been inspired by string theory,” Yau said. “It seems likely that we shall witness another major development in the 21st century, the advent of quantum geometry — a geometry that can incorporate quantum physics in the small and general relativity in the large.”
The McKnight-Zame Distinguished Lecture Series is made possible by a generous donation from Jeffrey Fuqua. Fuqua received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Miami in 1972 under the direction of Professor James McKnight. The series is named in honor of both Professor McKnight and Professor Alan Zame, who was a close mentor of Fuqua while he was a student at UM.
January 23, 2012
