Mathematician Solves a Big One After 140 Years 144
TaeKwonDood notes that ScientificBlogging.com has just written about a development in applied math that was published last year. "The Schwarz-Christoffel transformation is an elegant application of conformal mapping to make complex problems faster to solve. But it didn't do well with irregular geometries or holes, so it simplified too much for a lot of modern-day mechanical engineering applications. 140 years after Schwarz and Christoffel's work, a professor at Imperial College London has generalized the equation. MatLab users rejoice!"
Math Forfront (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Math Forfront (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Math Forfront (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Math Forfront (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is, how can you separate the invention of calculus from his work in classical physics? They were obviously developed hand-in-hand.
Re:Math Forfront (Score:5, Insightful)
It always amazes me how applicable math becomes hundreds of years after it's written. Think if Maxwell's equations, Newton's equations, Einstein's equations. Fluid Dynamics equations were probably pioneered well before they were applied to human machines. Modern-day aircraft would not operate without their understanding. Where the math goes, human technology will probably soon follow.
It's often debated whether mathematics is invented or discovered. I think the question is irrelevant. Mathematics is clearly a human endeavor. Whether it has some deeper meaning outside of human existence is not something we can even address, seeing as we can never step outside our human condition. But it is indisputable that mathematics has allowed us to move far beyond the boundaries of any other physical organism that we yet know of. Whether it's "real" or not, it is certainly real in the context of our own existence. The philosophical arguments between mathematicians and physicists are petty at best. Ultimately, all new math seems to find application in the physical world. We should not be surprised, given that we are physical beings.
I feel pride, not in humanity, but in the universe itself, that it has the capacity to create physical beings which are capable of comprehension, at least at a basic level, of the true nature of reality. It may be colored by our nature, but the triumphs of modern science, in particular nuclear energy, show that we may actually be aware of some fundamental truth. The law of mass-energy equivalence can be demonstrated through purely geometric arguments -- you need not even understand calculus in order to grasp the math. We have grasped the power of stars. That proves something about us, but I am not sure what.
Not quite a breakthrough (Score:5, Insightful)
Read the paper. This is not the first S-C formula for multiply connected regions. The claimed "key result" is a formula for a case where a formula is already known. More work will be needed to a adapt the MATLAB technology from singly- and doubly-connected regions to multiply connected regions.
This paper seems to be part of ongoing work by a small community and is probably useful, but it's not a major mathematical breakthrough -- more of an incremental step. Small technical improvements in one field of mathematics shouldn't make up a slashdot story. Just because someone put "140 year old" in the press release doesn't mean it's really important. A math story belongs on /. when a big result is announced -- on the level of Poincare's Conjecture, or the Modularity Theorem.
Re:Math Forfront (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Design (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Design (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why I emphasized modern-day aircraft. Designing a 777 or the new 7E7 off pure experimentation would take insanely more amounts of time and money. Math makes it a LOT easier, and its probable all turbine-driven commercial craft wouldn't exist at their current efficiencies without math being in the design process. Laugh all you want about their gas-guzzling reputations, but it would be interesting to see someone design such a sophisticated aircraft without advanced math.
Re:Math Forfront (Score:3, Insightful)
Reality is more like, for every discovery in science, a mathematician developed the relevant math in the abstract a hundred years earlier.
Not as catchy, I know.
Re:Math Forfront (Score:5, Insightful)
The really amazing thing is that the universe appears to respect our ideas of logic.
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