Page 71 - 8th European Congress of Mathematics ∙ 20-26 June 2021 ∙ Portorož, Slovenia ∙ Book of Abstracts

PUBLIC SPEAKERS

Mathematics: art or science?

Stanislav Smirnov, sksmirnov@gmail.com
Université de Genève, Switzerland, and St Petersburg University, Russian Federation, and

Skoltech, Russian Federation
Mathematics is an amazing and mysterious science. Ever since the time of Plato, philosophers
argue whether mathematical objects are imaginary, or whether they come from the real world,
while mathematicians mostly prove theorems without even asking about their link to reality. On
the other hand, the Pharaohs of Egypt and the Kings of Babylon had already grasped the prac-
tical power of mathematics, and of course the technological advances of the past two centuries
are built on successful applications of our science.

We will discuss the mathematician’s perspective on
- where does mathematics come from?
- why is the "imaginary" science so useful in real life?
- how we choose problems to work on, and why do we find our science so fascinating?

We will not be able to answer all these questions in our talk, but we will try to give a glimpse
of how mathematicians work.

European mathematics: a history in 200 stamps

Robin Wilson, r.j.wilson@open.ac.uk
Open University, United Kingdom (retired)

In this talk I shall cover the entire history of European mathematics in around 50 minutes –
illustrating my talk with around 200 informative (and sometimes amusing) postage stamps from
around the world featuring mathematics and mathematicians. This talk is aimed at an interested
general audience and assumes no mathematical knowledge.

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