The internationally famous mathematician Yau Chengtong Southeast University gave a lecture, talking about physics and mathematics "love and kill each other" He said so...

At 8:30 a.m. on October 22, half an hour before the lecture began, students from Southeast University had already lined up early to check in for tickets, and they entered the seat early, just waiting for the arrival of a "big coffee" in the mathematical world. Today, academician Qiu Chengtong, an internationally renowned mathematician and dean of The Truth-seeking College of Tsinghua University, walked into Southeast University and came face-to-face with the students of Dong university to bring them a "customized version" of the academic lecture.

"The students of the Mathematics Department always dislike the students of the Physics Department who only calculate, and the students of the Physics Department always complain that the students of the Mathematics Department only know how to prove", "The thing that you study physics says to learn mathematics: the thing you prove is not necessarily used after hundreds of years; the student of mathematics says to the student of physics: The thing you guessed may be wrong after hundreds of years"... In the network, we can always see the "love and killing" between the math department and the physics department, and in our reading careers, mathematics and physics will always be linked, but they are different. So what is the relationship and difference between mathematics and physics? In a special lecture, Yau Chengtong used his own personal experience to answer this question to the students of Dong University.

"No matter how beautiful the theory is, its internal structure must be compatible and cannot produce contradictions, otherwise it will not explain the phenomena of nature." Yau Chengtong introduced that the theories of physics and engineering are expressed by mathematics, physicists and engineers often use mathematical tools intuitively, hoping to see their theories can be applied soon, but in many details, they do not notice that the subtle changes in mathematics are more complex than they imagined, which will lead to the perfect theory they thought at the beginning, which may be "flawed" after in-depth discussion. The rigorous attitude of mathematicians is of great help to scientific theories and models, and among the many possible models, only mathematically compatible models can be retained.

"But for mathematicians, the theories of physics tend to derive some interesting mathematical formulas, and even find answers to some mathematical puzzles for mathematicians." Yau Chengtong shared his personal experience with everyone, "Thirty years ago, one of my postdocs and my friend introduced the concept of mirror symmetry in mathematical research in theoretical research, which shocked us mathematicians who do geometry! Speaking of this past, Yau Chengtong is still a little excited, he said, this concept solves a century-old problem in mathematics.

In Yau's view, physics and mathematics are a "cooperative relationship", and mathematicians can use the knowledge developed over decades to promote the methods of physicists and obtain many important results. Physicists can also derive many important mathematical formulas through theoretical research.

"Primes, imaginary numbers, geometric figures, fundamental waves, beautiful combinations, who says these are not part of nature?" We are getting more and more aware of these abstract-sounding ideas, and the more we know that they are everywhere! As an internationally renowned mathematician, Yau Chengtong also expressed his views on mathematics to the students of The Eastern University, believing that concise and beautiful mathematics is the most beautiful part of nature that shows human beings.

Correspondent Liu Huanhuan Tang Yao

Photography by Liu Li

Juvenile Chronicle Edited by Lan Qianyi

Yangtze Evening News/Purple Cow News reporter Cai Yunqi

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Source: Purple Cow News