Max Tegmark to Deliver Public Lecture at Institute for Advanced Study

Max Tegmark, Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Member (1989–90, 1997–2001) in the School of Natural Sciences, will return to the Institute to give a public lecture, “Our Mathematical Universe,” which will take place Friday, May 8, at 5:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall. The Institute will partner with local bookstore Labyrinth Books to make copies of Tegmark’s latest book, Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality (Knopf 2014), available at the event. Tegmark will sign books following the lecture. This lecture is sponsored by the Association of Members of the Institute for Advanced Study (AMIAS).

Tegmark’s research focuses on precision cosmology, which combines theoretical work with new measurements to place sharp constraints on cosmological models and their free parameters. In this lecture, Tegmark will survey how humans have repeatedly underestimated not only the size of the cosmos, but also the power of the human mind to understand it using mathematical equations. He will explore how mathematics in physics has allowed us to predict Neptune, radio waves and the Higgs boson. Tegmark will also discuss how we should think of ourselves in a cosmic perspective.

Tegmark explores these ideas in, Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality, which the New York Times described as “science writing as its best—dynamic, dramatic and accessible…brilliantly argued and beautifully written, it is never less than thought-provoking about the greatest mysteries of our existence.”

Tegmark is the author of more than two hundred technical papers and has been featured in many science documentaries. He has received numerous awards for his contributions to the field, including a Packard Fellowship, the Cottrell Scholar Award and a National Science Foundation Career grant. Tegmark is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1994. Prior to joining the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2004, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

This lecture is free and open to the public. For more information on this and other lectures at the Institute, visit www.ias.edu/events.