ANU PUBLIC LECTURE SERIES 2010

THE SHAPE OF INNER SPACE:

String Theory & the geometry of the universes’ hidden dimensions.

Professor Yau Shing-Tung,
Harvard University

Theatre 1, Manning Clarke Theatre Centre, Union Court, ANU

This lecture is free and open to the public

Light refreshments will be served following the lecture

String theory says we live in a ten-dimensional universe, but that only four are accessible to our everyday senses. According to theorists, the missing six are curled up in bizarre structures known as Calabi-Yau manifolds. The discoverer of these manifolds, Professor Yau Shing-Tung, will describe in general terms how geometry enables the understanding of space time and trace its historical development from the ancient Greeks through Einstein to modern string theory, analysing on the way the contributions of many great geometers and physicists.

Professor Yau has been a Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University since 1987 and is the current department chair. Born in Shantou, China, he was educated in Hong Kong and from there moved to the US, where he obtained his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley in 1971, under the great geometer of the 20th century, Shing -Shen Chern. Professor Yau is one of the most famous and influential figures in modern mathematics and has won many major international prizes, including the prestigious Fields Medal of the International Mathematical Union in 1982, the US National Medal of Science in 1997 and earlier this year he was awarded the Wolf Prize.

This lecture is based upon the recent book The shape of inner space: String theory and the geometry of the universes' hidden dimensions by Professor Yau and Steve Nadis.