Della Pietra Lecture Series Presents Abel Prize Winner Avi Wigderson November 12

The Della Pietra Lecture Series at the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics is hosting a public lecture by Abel Prize winner Avi Wigderson, Herbert H. Maass Professor in the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, on Wednesday, November 12.

The lecture will be held at 4 pm in the Della Pietra Family Auditorium, with a wine and cheese reception at 5 pm in the Simons Center lobby. A special concert by cellist Colin Carr and pianist Kyungwha Chu will follow in the auditorium at 5:30 pm.

Wigderson's lecture, titled "Randomness," will explore whether the universe is inherently deterministic or probabilistic - and perhaps more importantly - can we tell the difference between the two?

From the lecture description:

Humanity has pondered the meaning and utility of randomness for millennia. There is a remarkable variety of ways in which we utilize perfect coin tosses to our advantage: in statistics, cryptography, game theory, algorithms, gambling… Indeed, randomness seems indispensable! Which of these applications survive if the universe had no randomness in it at all? Which of them survive if only poor-quality randomness is available, e.g. that arises from "unpredictable" phenomena like the weather or the stock market? A computational theory of randomness, developed in the past four decades, reveals (perhaps counter-​intuitively) that very little is lost in such deterministic or weakly random worlds.

The talk is designed for a general audience and will be streamed live at scgp.stonybrook.edu/live

Wigderson became a faculty member at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1999, where he also founded the Computer Science and Discrete Mathematics program. His research spans a wide range of areas, including computational complexity theory, algorithms and optimization, randomness and cryptography, parallel and distributed computation, combinatorics, and graph theory, as well as connections between theoretical computer science, mathematics, and other scientific fields. Wigderson's influential work has earned him numerous honors, including the 2021 Abel Prize (shared with László Lovász) and the 2023 ACM A.M. Turing Award, recognizing both his foundational contributions to the theory of computation and his decades of intellectual leadership in the field.

The concert following the lecture is presented by the Simons Center Art and Outreach program and is also open to the public. Carr and Chu will perform the Beethoven Sonata no. 3 in A major and the Franck Sonata in M major.

Carr appears throughout the world as a soloist, chamber musician, recording artist, and teacher. He has played with major orchestras worldwide, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, The Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, the orchestras of Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, Philadelphia, Montréal and all the major orchestras of Australia and New Zealand. Carr has won many prestigious international awards, including first prize in the Naumburg Competition, the Gregor Piatigorsky Memorial Award, second prize in the Rostropovich International Cello Competition and won the Young Concert Artists competition.

Chu performs as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States, Canada, Asia and Europe, including appearances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and 92nd Street Y, and at the Kennedy Center in Washington. Chu has appeared as a soloist with the Seoul Symphony Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Jeju Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, Royal Conservatory of Music Orchestra, and Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra. Her awards include top prizes in the Korean Broadcasting System Competition, Korean Newspaper Music Competition, Bad Bertrich Internationaler Klaviersommer, Baltimore Music Club Competition, as well as in concerto competitions at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Royal Conservatory of Music, and Stony Brook University.