2008-09-24
16:45 at HPV G4

Entropy: The Mathematical Heritage of Ludwig Boltzmann

Cédric Villani

ENS, Lyon, France

In this lecture I shall discuss how Boltzmann's treatment of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, although developed for physical reasons, has found applications in various fields of mathematics and is still at the basis of current research, in various subjects such as the mathematical theory of kinetic gases, probability theory, Riemannian geometry or Von Neumann algebras. The talk is intended to be accessible to a generalist scientific audience. Zurich Physics Colloquium