This cycle of public lectures, offered by IMPA and Instituto Serrapilheira, is meant primarily for a local audience of school teachers and students. Some lectures will be given in Portuguese; for the others, simultaneous translation to Portuguese will be offered.

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Public Lecture

Local, Date & Time
Pavilion 5 - Room 101 D
August 02 | 12:30-13:30
Chair: Claudio Landim

Speaker: Étienne Ghys (France)
Frenchman Etienne Ghys is a research director at the École Normale Superieure de Lyon and a special visiting researcher at IMPA, Brazil. Besides his outstanding work on Geometry and Dynamical Systems, Ghys is also a distinguished popularizer of Mathematics and won the Clay Award for Dissemination of Mathematical Knowledge. Many years ago, Ghys substituted a research internship in Rio de Janeiro for his military service. Since then, he has been a fluent Portuguese speaker and a frequent visitor to our country.

Title
A geometria dos flocos de neve (em português/in Portuguese)

Abstract: Poucos brasileiros tiveram a chance de ver alguma vez neve caindo. Os flocos de neve são maravilhosos. Há mais de quatro séculos os cientistas tentam entender estas joias que caem do céu. Hoje, entendemos melhor o fenômeno da neve, mas muitas perguntas permanecem por responder. Nesta palestra, vou contar essa história e mostrar imagens bonitas.

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Public Lecture

Local, Date & Time
Amphitheater
August 03 | 15:30-16:30
Chair: Branca Vianna

Speaker: Ingrid Daubechies (USA)
Ingrid Daubechies is a Belgian mathematician. She has spent most of her career in the United States, where she is currently a professor at the prestigious Duke University. Daubechies is known worldwide for her work on the Mathematics of image compression, which is an essential tool for modern communication. She took part in the development of the JPEG 2000 standard for image files. Daubechies has received numerous awards for her work and is a recent former president of the International Mathematical Union. Besides her research, she is a devoted and sucessful expositor of Mathematics to broader audiences.

Title
Matemáticos ajudando curadores e historiadores de arte (em inglês, com tradução simultânea para português)
Mathematicians helping art conservators and art historians

Abstract: A Matemática pode ajudar historiadores e curadores de arte a estudar e compreender os trabalhos artísticos, o seu processo de produção e o seu estado de conservação.
Nesta apresentação revisaremos diversas colaborações desse tipo ao longo da última década. Algumas delas conduziram (e ainda estão conduzindo) a novos desafios muito interessantes na análise de sinais e de imagens. Em outras aplicações, podemos rejuvenescer trabalhos artísticos virtualmente, o que traz uma nova compreensão e experiência da arte, tanto para visitantes de museus quanto para especialistas.

Mathematics can help Art Historians and Art Conservators in studying and understanding art works, their manufacture process and their state of conservation. The presentation will review several instances of such collaborations in the last decade or so. Some of them led (and are still leading) to interesting new challenges in signal and image analysis. In other applications we can virtually rejuvenate art works, bringing a different understanding and experience of the art to museum visitors as well as to experts.

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Public Lecture

Local, Date & Time
Amphitheater
August 06 | 15:30-16:30
Chair: Hugo Aguilaniu

Speaker: Cédric Villani (France)
Frenchman Cédric Villani has one of the most charismatic personalities of the mathematical world. He excels in communicating advanced ideas to the general public. Villani won the Fields Medal in 2010 for his work on Geometry, Physics, and Partial Differential Equations. He is also a former director of the famous Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris. In 2017 Villani was elected to the French National Assembly and now presides the parliamentary committee for Science and Technology. Luckily for us, he has kept in touch with the academic world. He quickly agreed our invitation to return to Brazil and introduce young audiences to the fascination of Mathematics.

Title
A idade da Terra: quando a Terra era demasiada jovem para Darwin (em inglês, com tradução simultânea para português)
The age of the Earth: when the Earth was too young for Darwin

Abstract: Para explica a riqueza de diversidade das espécies de seres vivos, a teoria da evolução de Darwin requer que o processo seletivo, da sobrevivência dos mais bem adaptados, venha ocorrendo desde tempos muito remotos. Qual é a idade da Terra mesmo? O palestrante discorrerá sobre as ideias iniciais a respeito desta questão, e a resposta trazida pelas evidências científicas acumuladas ao longo de mais de um século de pesquisa.
To explain the wealth and diversity of living species, Darwin's theory of evolution requires the selection process through which the fittest only survive to be taking place for a very long time. How old is the Earth after all? The speaker will discuss the early ideas on this matter, and the answers that were brought by the scientific evidence accumulated during more than one century.

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Public Lecture

Local, Date & Time
Amphitheater
August 07 | 15:30-16:30
Chair: Marco Moriconi

Speaker: Tadashi Tokieda (USA)
Japan's Tadashi Tokieda has had a unique professional trajectory: he was a painter and then a philologist before turning to Mathematics. Tokieda is professor at Stanford University and also one of the world's most distinguished disseminators of Mathematics. His research field is Mathematical Physics, but he is also active at inventing, collecting and studying toys that explore the mysteries of Math and Physics. Tokieda is filled with energy and enthusiasm for his work. He is fluent in Japanese, French and English, and also speaks Latin, Classic Greek, Finnish and Russian.

Title
A matemática pelos brinquedos (em inglês, com tradução simultânea para português)

Toy models
— small mathematics in a big world —

Abstract: Quer vir conhecer alguns brinquedos?
Aqui entendemos `brinquedos´ num sentido especial: objetos da vida diária que podemos encontrar, ou fabricar em alguns minutos e que, no entanto, quando usados com imaginação, revelam surpresas que deixam os cientistas intrigados por um tempo.
Daremos exemplos concretos da diversidade de tais brinquedos, nos quais observaremos novos efeitos físicos, dos quais podemos extrair novas ideias matemáticas.

Would you like to come see some toys?
‘Toys’ here have a special sense: objects of daily life which you can find or make in minutes, yet which, if played with imaginatively, reveal surprises that keep scientists puzzling for a while.
We will see table-top demos of a diversity of such toys, in which we will notice new physical effects, from which we will try to extract some fresh mathematics.

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Public Lecture

Local, Date & Time
Amphitheater
August 08 | 15:30-16:30
Chair: Jorge Buescu

Speaker: Rogério Martins (Portugal)
Portuguese mathematician Rogério Martins is a professor at the University of Lisbon. He is a well-known researcher in Differential Equations and Dynamical Systems. Martins is also the presenter and mastermind of "Isto é Matemática" ("This is Mathematics"), a TV show for the dissemination of Math. His show, which is in its tenth season, won a special award from "Projeto Ver Ciência" in Brazil (2013) and was nominated to the European Science TV and Media Awards in the "Best general TV show" category. Martins also lends his voice to the Math videos of the Khan Academy in Portugal.

Title
Porque não conseguimos ver para além das três dimensões? (em português/in Portuguese)

Abstract: O que é uma hiperesfera? É simplesmente uma esfera num espaço de quatro dimensões: matematicamente é simples e claro. Mas então, porque é que conseguimos visualizar uma esfera mas não uma hiperesfera? A resposta pode parecer óbvia: porque vivemos num mundo de três dimensões!
Nesta palestra vamos ver que a resposta a esta pergunta pode não ser assim tão óbvia! Vamos tentar perceber de que forma é que o nosso cérebro lida com a ideia de espaço, encontrar analogias curiosas com a forma como percepcionamos a cor e fazer algumas experiências imaginárias... mas que nos vão deixar a pensar...

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