Campus Digest

HKBU honorary doctorate recipient Professor Martin Hairer speaks on “Taming Infinities”

17 Nov 2016

Professor Martin Hairer gives a lecture on “Taming Infinities”. Professor Martin Hairer gives a lecture on “Taming Infinities”.
Professor Martin Hairer gives a lecture on “Taming Infinities”.

 

Distinguished mathematics scholar Professor Martin Hairer, who was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, by HKBU this year, gave a lecture on “Taming Infinities” on 15 November.

Professor Hairer’s talk was a tour of his main area of research, discussing how mathematicians deal with problems in “renormalisation”. He also shared on how mathematicians fix problems from something that is easily considered as being meaningless. He used the example of the online skill game Bloxorz Block Puzzle to explain that things can be viewed very differently when they are viewed in scales that are much larger than normal. 

According to Professor Hairer, some physical and mathematical theories have the unfortunate feature that if one takes them at their face value, many areas of interest appear to be infinite. Various techniques, usually going under the common name of “renormalisation”, have been developed over the years to address this, allowing mathematicians and physicists to tame these infinities. Professor Hairer explored some of the mathematical aspects of these techniques to see how they have recently been used to make precise analytical statements about the solutions of equations whose meaning has not been clear until now.

Professor Martin Hairer is Regius Professor of Mathematics of the Mathematics Institute of The University of Warwick, UK. One of his notable contributions is his breakthrough in the study of stochastic partial differential equation. He has been showered with numerous accolades, including the “Nobel of Mathematics”– the Fields Medal awarded by the International Mathematical Union in 2014.

Organised by the Department of Mathematics, the lecture was one of the distinguished lectures in the series supported by Shun Hing Education and Charity Fund to celebrate the University’s 60th Anniversary.