Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771
ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM
Monday, February 25, 2013 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium
Bulent Atalay "The Crucial Importance of Form and Function — Jobs, Newton, and Leonardo"
ABSTRACT -- Bulent Atalay compares the modus operandi of Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs and Isaac Newton, underscoring the ways these three extraordinarily gifted individuals altered forever the we way we see the world. This is a talk about how science and art can complement each other. But it is also about maximizing creativity by cross-fertilizing diverse disciplines. "Universal genius" Leonardo was the ultimate master of integrating art and science. In our own time Steve Jobs made it a practice to marry the best of form and function, indeed, better than anyone else had done since the Renaissance genius. Finally, Isaac Newton, the greatest scientist-mathematician ever, who personally had little use for art and music, succeeded in irreversibly marrying mathematics and natural law (science). This cross-fertilization came in his monumental book, Principia, that fueled the Industrial Revolution, and signaled the beginning of the Enlightenment. For inventing the open-ended intellectual system — modern science — Newton has to be regarded as the architect of the modern age.
SPEAKER -- Born in Turkey, scientist, artist and author, Bulent Atalay , has been described by NPR, PBS and the Washington Post as a "Modern Renaissance Man." He is the author of two successful books on the intersection of art, science and mathematics, with Leonardo, the pre-eminent Renaissance man, serving as the foil. His best selling book, Math and the Mona Lisa, (Smithsonian Books, 2004) has appeared in 14 languages; and Leonardo's Universe (National Geographic Books, 2009) has appeared in only two — English and Japanese — but was declared "One of ten must-have books by the Britannica." Atalay's academic background (BS, MS, MA, PhD and post-doc training at Georgetown, Princeton, Berkeley and Oxford) is in theoretical physics. Retired from the classroom (University of Mary Washington and UVA) since 2009, he travels around the world lecturing on the "A-subjects," art, archaeology, astrophysics, atomic physics and Ataturk, confessing that he knows much less about the "B-subjects," business, banking, biology and botany... He has given lectures at Caltech, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Oxford, NIH, NASA… and frequently on cruise ships. See his website www.bulentatalay.com
Colloquium Committee Sponsor: Brent Warner
Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov