News Release:
UNE hosts top-level maths conference
| Date 12/12/03 No 231/03 An international conference at the University of New England is discussing how to describe, mathematically, the true complexity of the world. Examples of that complexity being examined at the conference range from the movement of liquids along tubes to the geometric structure of black holes. The field of mathematics that studies such complex changes and interactions is known as "partial differential equations". Twenty-five leading mathematicians from around the world are spending all this week [8-12 December] at the conference, titled "Non-linear Partial Differential Equations and their Applications". They have come to UNE from China Japan, France, Romania and the United States, as well as from within Australia, all of them invited to participate because of their outstanding expertise in partial differential equations. The equations under investigation are called "non-linear" because they describe complex interactions rather than simple (or "linear") sequences of events. "They're the mathematics of the real world," said the conference's convener, Associate Professor Chris Radford of UNE. "They can describe cumulative events like the much-discussed 'butterfly effect', where the fluttering of a butterfly's wing in Boston results in a tornado in Texas." Associate Professor Radford, the Head of UNE's School of Mathematics,
Statistics and Computer Science, said such equations could be applied
to a multitude of complex events, for example in industry or in
economics, explaining that such techniques had been used in medical
imaging and laser technology. Their application in describing complex
interactions of plants and animals in the science of ecology was
one of ever-increasing importance, he said. |
"However," he added, "mathematics is also one of the human race's oldest cultural pursuits. The beauty and elegance of mathematical constructs enriches the human spirit in much the same way as a piece of music by Mozart or Miles Davis." The conference at UNE is part of a research symposium program being funded by the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute. It is the first conference in the program to be held outside a capital city. The participants include three internationally-acclaimed mathematicians with strong links to UNE. Professor Neil Trudinger (who became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1997) and Professor Alan McIntosh are both UNE graduates, and are both now at the Centre for Mathematics and its Applications in the Institute of Advanced Studies at the Australian National University. Professor McIntosh is the Centre's Head. Professor Norman Dancer was Professor of Mathematics at UNE until he took up an appointment at the University of Sydney. He is one of Australia's most frequently-cited scientists, according to the International Science Citations Index. Media contact: Associate Professor Chris Radford, School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, UNE, Armidale (02) 6773 3231 or Lydia Clifford, Public Relations Manager, UNE, Armidale (02) 6773 2779. A photograph showing (L-R) Professor Alan McIntosh, Professor Norman Dancer, Professor Robert Bartnik, Professor Neil Trudinger and Associate Professor Chris Radford is available for download. |
