Mathematical Stories- Part 2: The Story of Sync

Mathematicians are known for using logic, symbols and abstractions in their work but, like other people, mathematicians are also storytellers. Their work tells stories, too, of what is and of what might be. In his 2022 Ulam lectures, Steven Strogatz will describe how mathematicians have tried to make sense of motion and change, of a world in never-ending flux. These are stories of intuition and courage, grounded in rigor, humility, and awe.

Every night along the tidal rivers of Malaysia, thousands of male fireflies congregate in the mangrove trees and flash on and off in unison. Similarly astonishing feats of synchronization occur throughout the natural and technological world. In this story of sync, Strogatz describes how our understanding of synchronization has evolved over the centuries and shares exciting new results and unsolved problems about how the structure of a network affects its tendency to get in sync.

Steven Strogatz is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University. After graduating from Princeton, Strogatz studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He did his doctoral work in applied mathematics at Harvard, followed by a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard and Boston University.