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MIT’s Strang Speaks Tonight on Mathematics in Life

Gilbert Strang, professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will lecture tonight at 5 pm, in Ayres 120.

The title of Strang’s lecture is “Mathematics in Life.” It is taken from two separate testimonies to United States Congress committees in which he explained why mathematics is so important to the nation.

During his career, Strang has authored, co-authored, or edited nine books and almost 150 articles. Six of his books are textbooks.

Strang was an undergraduate at MIT and a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford. His Ph.D. is from University of California, Los Angeles. Among his many honors are selection as a Sloan Fellow, a Fairchild Scholar, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Oxford Warden to Discuss Science and Humanities

Alan Ryan, warden of New College, Oxford University and former professor of politics at Princeton University, will deliver a public lecture, “Science and Democracy,” on Thursday, Feb. 6, 7 pm, in PAC 134. A reception will follow in Trinity 100.

Ryan is the author of eight books, among them Russell: A Political Life (Oxford, 1993), John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism (Norton, 1995), and Liberal Anxieties and Liberal Education (Hill & Wang, 1998). He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and The London Review of Books. In 1986, he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.

Ryan will discuss the ideas of the philosopher Karl Popper concerning the connections between a democratic, open society and the practice of science.

Ryan’s talk is sponsored by the Committee on Arts and Lectures, the Humanities Center, and Phi Sigma Tau. }