Title: Number Theory and Romanticism
Speaker: Prof. Loic Merel, IMJ-PRG, France
Date and Time: 13th September, 2023 | Wednesday 6:00PM
Venue: LHC Venus
Abstract: In his address to the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1998, David Mumford noticed a coincidence between intellectual movements in the arts and letters, and the development of mathematics. We will review the correspondence between the romantic movement, born in Germany in the late 18th century, and the golden age of number theory in that country from Gauss to the second world war. Then we will examine the appeal of number theory, and in what sense it corresponds to the aspirations of the romantics.