ChapterZero

Stephen Hawkings is giving a talk entitled “Running History Backwards” here on April 2nd, at 4pm. I have a required department colloqium from 4:15-5 on the same day. I actually wanted to go to this one, because it’s about optimization with PDEs as constraints: “Fast Algorithms for Variational Problems Constrained by Elliptic and Evolution Equations”. Sounds nice, yes? But from past experience I would be lucky to understand more than the introduction, and even that vaguely.

All other considerations aside, the opportunity is there for me to see the vaunted Dr. Hawkings– I’ve never read any of his books, being neither a theoretical physicist nor a frequent consumer of popular science works– so this would be my first exposure to him. How cool is that? Guess where I’m going to be at 4pm on April 2nd…