The Fox & Hedgehog Seminar Series

The Fox and Hedgehog seminars, established in 2023, aims to forge closer ties between mathematicians and physicists. The target audience of this series of pedagogical blackboard talks are PhD students, although any and all interested staff and students are always welcome to attend.

In an article in the New York Review of Books, Freeman Dyson writes, “Great scientists come in two varieties, which Isaiah Berlin, quoting the seventh-century-BC poet Archilochus, called foxes and hedgehogs. Foxes know many tricks, hedgehogs only one. Foxes are interested in everything, and move easily from one problem to another. Hedgehogs are interested only in a few problems which they consider fundamental, and stick with the same problems for years or decades... Science needs both hedgehogs and foxes for its healthy growth, hedgehogs to dig deep into the nature of things, foxes to explore the complicated details of our marvelous universe.”

Every two weeks, we invite a member of our community to give a pedagogical blackboard talk aimed at a broad audience of PhD students from mathematics, mathematical physics, and theoretical physics. Every speaker will be asked to answer the following:

• What is one big problem/idea in your field, and why is it interesting/motivating to you?
• How did you first encounter this problem/idea? How did you come to approach it, and how has your thinking and methodology developed along the way?
• Are you a Fox or a Hedgehog?

The seminar will alternate among our different physical locations, always available online. For in-person participants, the seminar will be followed by refreshments and a half-hour informal discussion, starting with “a day in the life” of the speaker.

Come along to these seminars and find out which type of scientist you are!