Lunch Lecture - Stefan Kebekus (Mathematik)

Mathematics is the art of proof. Proof that you can measure the height of a pyramid without leaving the ground (Thales), proof that you can know the earth is a sphere rather than a donut by measuring its curvature (Gauss-Bonnet), or proof that you can colour any map using only four colours (Appel-Haken). 

Despite its central place in the subject, the concept of “mathematical proof” has seen dramatic evolution in time, and is subject to some national traditions even today. The lecture aims to highlight some of these developments: the “Hilbert program”, a proposed research program from the 1920s aiming to clarify the foundations of mathematics, completely revolutionized the meaning of “proof”. Starting from the 1990s, input from theoretical physics has turned some areas of mathematics upside down. In long term, the increasing computational power of machines may again change the ways that working mathematicians think about proofs and handle them in practise.