Clay Public Lecture
Beyond Computation
Michael
Sipser, MIT
Tuesday, October 3, 2006 at 7:00 PM
Harvard University Science Center — Hall B
One
Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138
In a remarkable 1956 letter, the great logician Kurt Gödel asked the
famous mathematician and computer pioneer John von Neumann whether
certain computational problems could be solved without resorting to
brute force search. In so doing, he foreshadowed the P versus NP problem,
one of the great unanswered questions of contemporary mathematics and
theoretical computer science. A solution to this problem would reveal
the theoretical limitations of computer power for solving puzzles,
cracking codes, proving theorems, and optimizing many practical tasks.
Michael Sipser is the head of the mathematics department at MIT.
He is well known for his research in complexity theory and algorithms,
and for his textbook on the theory of computation.
Clay Public Lectures
The aim of this lecture series is to increase the
awareness and understanding of mathematics — in the
public at large as well as in the business, scientific and
university communities.
Past Lectures:
Technology-driven Statistics Terry Speed of UC Berkeley, and WEHI, Harvard University Science Center, October 30, 2007
Surfing with Wavelets Ingrid Daubechies of Princeton University, MIT, Stata Center, April 10, 2007
Beyond Computation Michael Sipser
of MIT. Harvard University, October 3, 2006
Mathematics and Magic Tricks Persi Diaconis
of Stanford University. MIT, April 25, 2006
Escher and the Droste effect Hendrik
Lenstra of Leiden University. Harvard, October 25, 2005
Are there unsolved problems about
numbers? Barry Mazur, Harvard University. May 3,
2005
Four thousand years of
mathematics in images Bill Casselman, University of
British Columbia. April 26, 2005
Is there such a thing as
infinity? Timothy Gowers, Cambridge University. March
22, 2004.
Lecture notes
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