Dear all:
The following talk in the history of mathematics, especially the calculus,
may be of interest.
tomorrow Wednesday 19 November at 2.15 at MR2 CMS:
Michael Berry (Physics Bristol) is a superb speaker, as well as brilliant
researcher
The talk is on divergent series; and especially its history in folk like
Thomas Bayes
details at:
http://talks.cam.ac.uk/talk/index/54642
abstract:
Following the discovery by Bayes in 1747 that Stirlingâs series for the
factorial is divergent, the study of asymptotic series has today reached
the stage of enabling summation of the divergent tails of many series with
an accuracy far beyond that of the smallest term. Several of these
advances sprang from developments of Airyâs theory of waves near optical
caustics such as the rainbow. Key understandings by Euler, Stokes, Dingle
and Ecalle unify the different series corresponding to different
parameter domains, culminating in the concept of resurgence: quantifying
the way in which the low orders of such series reappear in the high
orders.
Best, Jeremy
------
Jeremy Butterfield:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Butterfield
Homepage: http://trin-hosts.trin.cam.ac.uk/fellows/butterfield/
Trinity College, Cambridge CB2 1TQ
Tel: 01223 761524 (office); 07557-668413 (mobile)
Visit the journal, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/13552198
_____________________________________________________
To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list,
or change your membership options, please visit
the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents
List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive
Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email
attachments. See the list information page for further
details and suggested alternatives.
