International “String Math” conference at the Faculty of Physics
05 01 2023
Category: Events
From 11 to 16 July 2022, the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw hosted the “String Math 2022” conference, organised by this faculty in collaboration with the UW Institute for Advanced Studies and the UW Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics. A total of 120 participants attended the onsite meetings, and a further 100 or so attended the conference remotely.
“String Math” are highly prestigious international conferences on issues at the intersection of mathematics and physics related to string theory, quantum field theory and related topics. They are held each year in a different location around the world, and the first one was held in 2011.
Links between physics and mathematics
Surprising new links between mathematics and high-energy theoretical physics have been discovered in recent years. These have resulted, among other things, in a new field of research that is often referred to as physical mathematics. String theory plays an important role in this area, among other things as a source of often surprising hypotheses at the frontiers of mathematics that would be difficult to make without knowledge of physics.
The “String Math” conference is a natural and prestigious venue for such discoveries to be presented and discussed by both physicists and mathematicians.
Fields Medal winners
Among the speakers at this year’s conference were three Fields Medal winners. Edward Witten – Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, USA – gave a lecture on algebras and entropy. Maxim Kontsevich – Professor at the Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies in Bures-sur-Yvette, France – presented new results on perturbative expansions in quantum mechanics.
This year’s Fields Medal winner, Ukrainian mathematician Maryna Viazovska – a professor at Lausanne University of Technology in Switzerland – gave a popular science lecture accompanying the conference. The lecture was devoted to one of her most important achievements: the solution of the so-called sphere packing problem. The recording can be found on the Zapytaj Fizyka website.
Detailed information about the conference, as well as presentations and lecture recordings, can be found at StringMath2022.fuw.edu.pl.
Find out more about the events organised by the UW Institute for Advanced Studies »