Latest Past Events
Wendy Parker: Beyond Prediction: The Computer as ‘Inductive Device’ in the Study of Weather and Climate
ABSTRACT In this talk, Parker will examine how scientists have used computers to understand weather and climate, and how the computer might be even better used in the future to impact our understanding of meteorology. She discusses this against the backdrop of the study of severe storms and climate change. SPEAKER PROFILE Wendy Parker is [...]
John Norton: Approximation and Idealization
ABSTRACT This Rotman Lecture focuses on approximation and idealization, and how important the fact that only idealizations involve novel reference is when describing infinite limits, as in statistical mechanics. SPEAKER PROFILE John D. Norton studied chemical engineering at the University of New South Wales (1971-1974), then worked for two years as a technologist at the [...]
John Norton: Einstein as the Greatest of the 19th Century Physicists
ABSTRACT Modern writers often endow Einstein with a 21st century prescience about physical theory that, it just so happens, is only now vindicated by the latest results of the same writers’ research. Norton explores another side of Einstein – the sense in which his work fulfills the discoveries of the 19th century. SPEAKER PROFILE John [...]