Wednesday Colloquia

The Music of the Primes

by Prof. Marcus du Sautoy (University of Oxford)

Wednesday, May 12, 2010 from to (Asia/Kolkata)
at Colaba Campus ( AG-66 )
Description
"Why did Beckham choose the number 23 shirt? How is 17 the key to the evolutionary 
survival of a strange species of cicada?" Prime numbers are the atoms of arithmetic 
- the hydrogen and oxygen of the world of numbers. Despite their fundamental 
importance to mathematics, they represent one of the most tantalising enigmas in 
the pursuit of human knowledge. Mathematics is the science of patterns. Yet the most 
fundamental numbers in the subject seem to have no patterns to them at all. They 
seem scattered randomly through the universe of numbers. But by looking at these 
numbers in a new way, mathematicians have discovered what they believe is the secret 
to the way Nature chose the primes. 


Organised by Nitin Chaudhari
PODCAST click here to start