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This event, jointly hosted with the British Society for the History of Mathematics, will focus upon the relationship between mathematics and money, from coinage through to cryptocurrencies.
Algorithms, loosely translated, are systems for doing things. Algorithms are thus the link from pre-history to the modern world – without algorithms we would have an inanimate universe without all the mess and complexity of real life. It turns out that the history of algorithms is messy.
Number theory is the branch of mathematics that’s primarily concerned with our counting numbers, 1, 2, 3, etc., and in particular the prime numbers, the ‘building blocks’ of our number system. The subject dates back to the ancient Greeks and is notable for its intrinsic beauty and elegance.
Environment Professor Jacqueline McGlade will examine how renewable energy systems, ranging from large scale hydroelectric dams, solar arrays and geothermal plants, to small-scale solar micro-grids can offer immense opportunities for climate mitigation and achieving a clean energy future.
This final lecture will celebrate some of the great mathematical equations, and related algorithms, which have both changed the world as we know it and which are likely to change it in the future.
This lecture explores these notions through an examination of the film Silent Running (1972), which imagined gardens in space, in which the last remnants of Earth’s vegetation are preserved aboard gigantic spaceships.