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.”

The seminar will cover a broad spectrum of topics ranging from quantum physics of the universe to areas of pure mathematics (especially: algebra, geometry, topology, and representation theory) that often inform and are informed by quantum physics. All speakers will be asked to answer the following:

• What is one big problem/idea in your field, and why is it interesting/motivating to you?
• What’s a specific example of day-to-day research that you do related to this problem?
• Are you a Fox or a Hedgehog?

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

Thank you to those that attended and participated in the seminars this term. We will be back with more exciting talks in the fall.