Royal Canadian Institute Lecture
Co-sponsored by the Fields Institute
January 20, 2013 at 3:00 pm
Macleod Auditorium, Medical Sciences Building,

Stephen A. Cook, Ph.D., Department of Computer Sciences and Department of Mathematics, U of T
‘P versus NP’ and the Limits of Computation

The security of encrypted computer protocols such as credit card transactions depends on unproven mathematical assumptions concerning the limits of computation. The central assumption is the conjecture known as ‘P vs NP’, which is one of the “million dollar questions” listed by the Clay Mathematics Institute. I will explain the conjecture, and how our world could be very different if it turns out to be false.
Please see: http://royalcanadianinstitute.org

Public Lecture
November 8, 2012 at 5p.m.
Bill Janeway, Institute for New Economic Thinking
Reasoning about Rationality: Why Bubbles are both Banal and Necessary

Public Lecture
September 20, 2012
Stéphane Nonnenmacher, Commissariat à l'énergie atomique, Saclay
Counting stationary modes: a discrete view of geometry and dynamics
Co-sponsored by the Fields Institute and Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto

Public Lecture
July 5, 2012
Steve Keen, University of Western Sydney
Why the crisis is not over

May 31, 2013
BERNARD CHAZELLE, Princeton University
Why Algorithms Are Poised to Become the Language of the Living World
(Video of the talk)
Just as physics speaks the language of mathematics, the new sciences of the 21st century speak the language of algorithms. The difference lies in the high descriptive complexity of the systems commonly found in social and biological organisms. While history plays virtually no role in physics, it is the distinguishing feature of the living world. Algorithms provide not only the expressivity needed to model complex living systems but also the analytical tools for their analyses. This (self-contained) talk will illustrate the power of "natural algorithms" by examining broad families of agent-based systems for which algorithmic tools can do what differential equations cannot.

Past Avner Magen Memorial Lectures
May 25, 2012
Avi Wigderson, Institute for Advanced Study
Randomness

July 11, 2011
Avner Magen Memorial Lecture Day
Ben-Gurion University