German Movie Premiere: The Genius of Srinivasa Ramanujan
This documentary is a celebration of the story of Ramanujan while walking in his footsteps trying to fathom his genius. I will begin with a very short (less than 5 minutes) introduction to the making of the documentary. Then we will watch the documentary; it is about one hour long. Finally, I can (try to) answer any questions the audience might have.
"The Genius of Srinivasa Ramanujan" was directed by Nandan Kudhyadi, and co-produced by Vigyan Prasar in New Delhi, and IISER Pune. The documentary features Ken Ono, Raghuram, K.Srinivasa Rao and T.V.Venkateswaran. The filming was done mostly in Kumbakonam, Nammakal, Erode, Chennai (all in India), and Cambridge, UK. The documentary also involves conversations with: Bruce Berndt, George Andrews, John Coates, Ram Murty and Kumar Murty. It was released in IISER Pune in March 2013.
"Late Style". Bonn premiere of film documentary about Yuri Manin
Anges Handwerk and Harrie Willems have made a remarkable documentary about the life and work of Yuri Manin, Emeritus Director at the Max Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, who began his career as a student at Moscow State University in the year of Stalin's death 1953 and whose subsequent professional life reflects the history of mathematics and mathematicians trying to overcome the political constraints of that time. The film will be shown for the first time in Bonn, prior to its publication by Springer in 2012. The directors will be present and available for questions and discussion after the screening.
Yuri Ivanovich Manin started his distinguished career as scientist at Moscow State University. There he received his bachelor's degree in 1958 but, even before this, his first mathematics paper On cubic congruences to a prime modulus (Russian) appeared in print. He continued to undertake research at the Steklov Mathematical Institute in Moscow advised by Igor Shafarevitsch and after the award of his doctorate in 1960 he was appointed as Principal Researcher at the Steklov Mathematical Institute and professor for algebra at the Moscow State University. In 1991/92 he was at the Columbia University and till 1993 at the MIT, remaining , in absentia, a member of the Steklov Institut in Moscow. Since 1992 he is member of the scientific board of the Max Planck Institut for Mathematics in Bonn and was its director from 1993 to 2005. For him and his wife Xenia Semenova, Bonn became their main residence.
“The breadth of Manin's contributions have been remarkable. He has written papers on: algebraic geometry including ones on the Mordell conjecture for function fields and a joint paper with V Iskovskikh on the counter-example to the Lüroth problem; number theory including ones about torsion points on elliptic curves, p-adic modular forms, and on rational points on Fano varieties; and differential equations and mathematical physics including ones on string theory and quantum groups. He has also written famous papers on formal groups, the arithmetic of rational surfaces, cubic hypersurfaces, noncommutative algebraic geometry, instanton vector bundles and mathematical logic.”
About the directors of the film: Agnes Handwerk, Hamburg, and Harrie Willems, Amsterdam, both work as free journalists. They are the authors of the acclaimed documentary "Wolfgan Doeblin - A Mathematician Rediscovered". Agnes Handwerk recieved the Prize for Journalism of the German Mathematical Society DMV for a radio feature about Alexander Grothendieck.
Ein Abend im Grenzbereich zwischen Poesie und Mathematik
»Ein Mathematiker, der nicht etwas Poet ist, wird nimmer ein vollkommener Mathematiker sein«, schreibt der Mathematiker Weierstraß im August 1883 an Sofja Kowalewskaja. Aber ist die Mathematik als exakteste der Wissenschaften nicht eigentlich die Gegenspielerin der Poesie? Ist es nicht wie für Lessing »gewiß, daß dasjenige, was die Poesie von der Mathematik borgt, den Witz vertrocknet und ihn zu einer körperlichen Genauigkeit gewöhnet, welche mit der metaphysischen Genauigkeit der Dichter gar keine Verwandtschaft hat«? Der österreichische Lyriker Oswald Egger widerlegt mit seinem Werk das Klischee der Unvereinbarkeit von Dichtung und exakter Wissenschaft. Immer wieder hat er sich engagiert und produktiv mit geometrischen und algebraischen Strukturen der modernen Mathematik auseinandergesetzt, vom »Lehrbuch der literarischen Mathematik« von 1998 bis zu seinem 2008 in der Edition Unseld erschienen Band »Diskrete Stetigkeit«.
Oswald Egger stellt Auszüge aus seinem Werk vor und diskutiert mit dem Mathematiker Ralph Kaufmann über das Verhältnis von Poesie und Mathematik. Die Germanistin Andrea Albrecht kommentiert das Werk Oswald Eggers aus literaturwissenschaftlicher Sicht.
Weitere Informationen: http://www.mpim-bonn.mpg.de/node/3498
Politische Raumkurven. Zur hundertjährigen Geschichte einer mathematischen "Tatsache"
Ein kurzes Gegenbeispiel, das der junge Theodor Vahlen 1891 veröffentlichte und das ein halbes Jahrundert lang als Teil des mathematisches Menscheitswissens galt, wurde plötzlich im Zweiten Weltkrieg druch Oskar Perron zum Mittelpunkt einer politisch-mathematischen Debatte. Im ersten Teil des Vortrags erinnern wir zunächst an diese Geschichte. Das Beispiel ist schon deshalb interessant, weil mathematisch-politische Debatten nicht sehr häufig sind. Ausserdem aber werfen wir im zweiten Teil einen frischen Blick auf das Problem.
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