Teias Matemáticas : Comunicações

The Greek word "mathema", meaning knowledge cognition, understanding, perception, strongly suggests that the study of mathematics began some 3,000 years ago with asking questions about the natural world. Since ancient times mathematical ideas and theorems have impressed scientists with their beauty as well as their power to explain natural phenomena. Some Greek scholars believed that "ultimate truth" could be known only through the study of mathematics, and Paul Dirac, one of the founders of modern quantum mechanics went as far as to say that "God is a Mathematician". In this century, with the development of modern mathematics, the intimate connection that the Greeks saw between mathematics and philosophy has become obscured. In our lecture, we will take a look at a branch of mathematics called "The Calculus of Variations" which has its roots in antiquity. We will see how its development was continually driven by a need to discover fundamental principles of nature, thereby revealing the rules by which the Creator constructed His Universe.