A Mathematician Who Makes the Best of Things

Alessio Figalli, Member in the School of Mathematics, recently sat down with frequent IAS Director's Visitor Siobhan Roberts to discuss his work on optimal transport, a field with applications ranging from meteorology to machine learning. Figalli described math as a “creative process and a language to describe nature.” His work focusing on optimization seeks to describe nature through finding the most efficient allocation of starting to end points. The “scope of investigation” within the field is “wide,” stated Roberts, “including clouds, crystals, bubbles and chatbots.” 

Their conversation, published in The New York Times, provides insight into the Fields Medal-winning mathematician’s work, the new directions the field is taking his research, and the ways in which curiosity-driven theoretical exploration, such as that taking place at IAS, continues to provide the backbone for new mathematical discoveries:

“In society, the risk is always that people just see math as being important when they see the connection to applications. But it’s important beyond that — the thinking, the developments of a new theory that came through mathematics over time that led to big changes in society. Everything is math.

“And often the math came first. It’s not that you wake up with an applied question and you find the answer. Usually the answer was already there, but it was there because people had the time and the freedom to think big. The other way around it can work, but in a more limited fashion, problem by problem. Big changes usually happen because of free thinking.”

Read the full interview at The New York Times.