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Goddard Space Flight Center Engineering Colloquium

Date: Monday, May 6, 2002

Title: Euclid's Window: the Story of Curved Space from Thales to String Theory

Speaker: Leonard Mlodinow

Abstract

From Einstein and Schroedinger to Hawking and Witten, physicists have recognized the vital and growing importance of geometry to modern physical theories. In this talk I will trace five revolutions of geometrical thought: 1) the idea of proof; 2) graphs, coordinates and the algebraization of geometry; 3) the curved space revolution and its implications for scientific and mathematical philosophy; 4) the relationship between space and time, and matter and energy; and 5) modern theories deriving physical law from the structure of space-time.

Speaker

Leonard Mlodinow is a member of the Writer's Guild of America, West, the American Physical Society, and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of California at Berkeley. He has authored numerous publications in physics, mathematics, and computer science journals and is the author of the popular science book, Euclid's Window. He has just completed Feynman's Rainbow, a memoir of his relationship with physicist Richard Feynman and is currently co-authoring, with Stephen Hawking, a teenage edition of A Brief History of Time. Currently, Dr. Mlodinow is Vice President, Emerging Technology and R&D at Scholastic Inc. in New York. Prior to that, Dr. Mlodinow designed and produced numerous best-selling and award-winning children's software titles. Before working in software, Mr. Mlodinow wrote for network television for seven years, for shows such as Star Trek, the Next Generation, MacGyver, Night Court, and It's Gary Shandling's Show. Before that, he was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Max Planck Institut in Munich, Germany, and on the physics faculty of the California Institute of Technology. 


Colloquium Committee Sponsor: Jim Heaney


Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov

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