C O L L O Q U I U
M
The Beauty of the Hydrogen Atom
Professor Guo-Wu MENG
Department of Mathematics, HKUST
The Kepler problem — a problem about the planetary motion or the hydrogen atom — is probably the most well-known scientific problem in the last three centuries. What is less-known about the Kepler problem is its mathematical beauty: it is a God-made playground for the interplay of analysis, algebra, geometry and topology.
The Kepler problem and its beautiful mathematical structure are far from isolated. There has been a continuous fruitful interest in searching for their new generalizations in the last six decades — a mathematical endeavor pioneered by E. Schroedinger in 1940.
The talk starts with the classical solution by Newton,
and then proceeds to the quantum solution by Schroedinger.
Along the way, the hidden beautiful structure responsible for the exact
solution of the Kepler problem is revealed. Towards
the end of the talk, we give a survey of various generalizations. We end
the talk with our recent generalization which seems to end the aforementioned
mathematical endeavor. Most part of the talk just requires the knowledge of a
college-level calculus.
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Date: |
February 10, 2006 (Friday) |
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Time: |
4:00 – 5:00pm |
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Place: |
Room 517, Meng Wah Complex |
Tea will be held in Room 516, Meng Wah Complex at 3:40pm
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All are welcome |
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