Timothy Gowers' Lecture On 'The Importance of Mathematics' (France, 2000)

Professor Timothy Gowers (Washington 2009):
[Wikimedia Commons by AllenS]

Professor William Timothy Gowers FRS (1963) is Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Trinity College. He was a recipient of the Fields Medal in 1998 for his research producing connections between the fields of combinatorics and functional analysis. The Fields Medal, founded at the behest of mathematician John Charles Fields and first awarded in 1936, is viewed by many as the top honor a mathematician can receive.

The videos below are of Professor Gowers delivering a lecture on 'The Importance of Mathematics' at The Millennium Meeting, Collège de France, May 24, 2000.

The lecture in 2000 was in many ways quite prophetic. Professor Gowers has gone on to initiate the polymath project via his blog (here) which has enabled a successful collaborative attack on the density Hales-Jewett theorem for lines of length 3. He has also been instrumental in launching the Tricki.org project in 2009 (a Wikipedia-style site) for collecting methods of mathematical proof. One of the important arguments from his 2000 lecture was how apparently unrelated areas of mathematics, some of which could be deemed as "impractical", may be drawn together to help solve important mathematical problems.

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Tags: Cambridge University - Fields Medal - Lecture - Mathematics - Timothy Gowers - Trinity College
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