Special Lectures

Public lectures play a very important role in bringing science to the masses. The tradition was started at the Royal Institution in Britain when Michael Faraday organized lectures for the general public. The typical lecture highlighted some particular aspect of science and to emphasize the fact that scientific claims need to be verified by experiments, Faraday's lectures usually contained experimental demonstrations. That tradition still continues after a century and half. Indeed, the large crowds at these lectures caused a traffic jam of hansom cabs so much so that the Albemarle Street on which the Royal Institution stands had to be declared a one-way street. In fact it is claimed that this was the first one way street in the world.
                           Taking leaf out of Faraday's work, it is not surprising if the mathematical year encourages public lectures on mathematics...lectures which would inspire confidence amongst the typical citizen that mathematics may, after all, have something interesting for him or her. In fact, I feel that the Indian institutions are slow in catching on to this opportunity. There are not many public lectures in maths to attract the typical member of the public.
                          At the other end, there are several technical lectures and workshops which encourages the graduates and research workers to look at the emerging areas in mathematics. One such example was of the Mathematical Panorama Lectures organized by the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. To capture the seriousness of these lectures, one may note that those wishing to attend these were encouraged to attend a workshop at IIT, Mumbai where preparatory lectures on the topic of the Panorama lectures were given. The topic of the Panorama Lectures was The Dynamics of Vector Fields in Dimension 3. The topic would interest only a small community of research workers; yet the efforts spent on it was well worth it.

Recreational Mathematics

As a part of the Mathematics year attempts are being made to bring forth the 'fun' aspect of maths to counter the prevalent image of the subject as a 'terror subject'. Maths is not all number crunching. In fact most of the important results in the subject call for logical reasoning rather than tedious numerical calculations.
               As a schoolboy i recall spending a lot of my spare time on solving mathematical puzzles. There are numerous books of such collections of puzzles and paradoxes. Logical reasoning is required to solve or understand them. Unfortunately, there are very few such books in India's local languages like Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, etc. One hopes that part of the interest and momentum generated by the Mathematics Year will be devoted to the creation of literature on recreational mathematics in local languages.
               An example of recreational mathematics may suffice to illustrate the kind of problems that one encounters in this type of mathematics. A man wishes to take his three possessions across the river. They are a cow, a pile of grass and a tiger. He is told that the boat is of limited capacity and so at one time he can take only one of the three items across. Also, if the man leaves the cow and the grass unattended, the cow will eat the grass. Likewise if the tiger and the cow are left unattended the tiger would eat the cow. So how will he take these items safely across?
               The solution, as you will find, does not involve numbers: it calls for logical thinking. Solving such problems the student will discover that he or she begins to appreciate mathematics better.
               As a part of the highlights of this year, a mathematical museum named after Ramanujan will be set up in Chennai with models, exhibits, movies, etc. bringing the message of mathematics loud and clear: that it is not a terror driven subject but the center of so much intellectual fun.    

Issac Newton

Despite a six month period given for solution, no European mathematician could solve it. Eventually the news of this challenge reached Issac Newton in London. Although a very distinguished scientist in his early career when he also graced the Lucasian Chair at Cambridge, Newton had moved to London as the master of the Mint. There he had introduced many reforms. But he was officially detached from the academic-cum-research environment of a university like Cambridge.
                       It is said that Newton had just come back from his mint work in the evening when the of the problem reached him. The challenge part nettled him into having a go at solving the problem right away. He sat down to solve it and finally succeeded after working on it till the early morning hours. He sent his solution to the Royal Society telling the Secretary to forward it to Bernoulli without telling him who had actually solved it. It is said that when the solution reached Bernoulli he recognized that such an elegant solution could come only from Issac Newton; and he remarked; "I know the lion from its paws."
                      Stories like this tell us about the human side of the subject. They remind us that although maths is an apparently dry subject moving along logical tracks, its practitioners are human and their interaction with the subject adds a lot of human interest that makes the subject attractive. 

History and Development of Mathematics

A subject does not feel remote or 'alien' provided we learn something about how it started, how it evolved and who were the major players in the process. We may discover that the visionaries who started the new area did not have the ability to see how far it will grow. We may also discover that great mathematics made mistakes or made the wrong guesses. There may be stories of great inspiration accidentally given.
                  Take the episode of the challenge issued by the distinguished European mathematician Johann Bernoulli in the year 1696. The challenge was in the form of a problem:
Given two points A and B on a vertical wall, with B below but not vertically below A, what shape a wire connecting the two points should have in order that a bead sliding down it from A to B without friction, takes the least time???????
can you answer?!!....

The 'Fear' of Mathematics

It is commonly heard statement from school children as well as their parents that maths is a very difficult subject. Most would somehow like to see the end of it and breathe a sigh of relief when they switch on to a course that does not demand the teaching of mathematics. This is very unfortunate for mathematics is intrinsically very beautiful to be admired like a painting by Van Gogh or Raja Ravi Varma. Also, at the same time the subject is very essential to the growth of many other disciplines. It is often called the Queen of Sciences or the handmaiden of sciences. But its influence transcends the boundary between the sciences and humanities. Indeed mathematical techniques are useful in many contexts that have nothing to do with science.

                       In 1957 when the Soviet Union launched the first satellite Sputnik, their rivals, the United States sat up in a panic. The space exploit of the Soviets indicated their high degree of preparedness with the cutting edge technology. The U.S. realized that to match it, the teaching of mathematics had to receive boost and so a crash programme in mathematics was followed in the United States.

                      The purpose behind launching the NMD was to make mathematics more popular and acceptable. To this end several approaches could be followed provided each is pursued at the 'above threshold' level.

We will discuss a few next.....