Celsius Lecture 2025: Two and a Half Millennia of Irrationality in Mathematics скачать в хорошем качестве

Celsius Lecture 2025: Two and a Half Millennia of Irrationality in Mathematics

A lecture given by Professor Francesco Calegari, Algebraic Number Theory, University of Chicago, Department of Mathematics during the 2025 Celsius-Linnaeus Lectures on February 13 at Uppsala University. Two And a Half Millennia or Irrationality in Mathematics. The discovery of irrational numbers - especially the fact that √2 is not rational - is often attributed to the Pythagorean philosopher Hippasus. According to legend, this revelation so disturbed his fellow Pythagoreans that they drowned him in a lake. In this talk, we will explore the long (often unsuccessful) history of our attempts to understand irrationality, with the goal of explaining how mathematicians really think about these questions. Our journey will span from ancient Greece to the ancien régime, from 17th-century Basel to the present day. Frank Calegari was born in Australia in 1975 where he attended the University of Melbourne. Frank was a graduate student of Ken Ribet at Berkeley. After a postdoctoral position at Harvard, Frank was a professor at Northwestern University until he moved to the University of Chicago in 2015 where he has been ever since. Frank was an American Institute of Mathematics five year fellow, a Sloan fellow, and was elected as a fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2013. In 2022, Frank gave a plenary address at the (virtual) International Congress of Mathematicians. Frank has played the piano for many years, and studied at the University of Melbourne under a student of Alfred Brendel. He has appeared live with Zubin Mehta and the Israeli Philharmonic, although, fortunately for everyone involved, as a choir boy and not as a pianist. This lecture is part of Uppsala University Celsius-Linnaeus Lectures. Each year the Faculty of Science and Technology arranges the Celsius-Linnaeus honorary lectures in memory of Anders Celsius and Carl von Linné. The selected Celsius- and Linnaeus lecturers are at today's forefront within their field.