On Thursday, I had the pleasure of sitting in on Carnegie Mellon alumnus Manil Suri’s “thesis defense.” Well, it wasn’t exactly a thesis defense; that’s more of a pun. Manil Suri’s new book, “The Big Bang of Numbers: How to Build the Universe Using Only Math,” is centered upon the idea of building the universe with math, hence the lecture title “Victor M. Bearg Lecture: What if We Built the Universe Using Only Math?” Dr. Suri thus “defended” the thesis of his book with a presentation, and by answering questions from his “thesis committee” of Carnegie Mellon professors Jeremy Avigad, James Wynn, and Tiziana Di Matteo.
His presentation prior to their questions was equal parts interesting and hilarious. With a mastery of Powerpoint animations and sound effects that would make Bill Gates blush, he explained why he wrote the book and, biblically, explained what would need to be created each day (arithmetic, geometry, physics…) to get our Universe by the seventh.
Manil Suri is very successful. He wrote three well-regarded novels prior to this most recent book. He’s got a Ph.D. in mathematics. And he’s written many articles for the New York Times, including one titled “How to Fall in Love with Math” that was the number two article of the week! (Number one was about the controversial actions of the Pope. More on this later.) For this lecture, Suri started with a quote from Leopold Kronecker: “God gave us integers, all else is the work of man.” He segued from here into a story about the magic trick his teacher Dr. Huzurbazar showed him. For the numbers to start ex nihilo, Huzurbazar started with nothing (the empty set {}). This represented the number 0. Then he made a set containing this empty set ({{}}), denoting it as 1. This is a set containing 0. Then he created the set containing the empty set and the set containing the empty set ({{},{{}}}), denoting it as 2. This is a set containing 0 and 1. From here, all numbers can be created, and so this magic trick creates numbers “out of nothing.” Perhaps you could call it the “big bang of numbers.”
I won’t get into the whole lecture shebang here (for that you’re gonna need a time machine, or just buy his book), but I will mention the spinning symmetrical Mona Lisa. In a discussion on the ideas of beauty, which symmetry is often associated with, Dr. Suri gave the Mona Lisa more and more lines of symmetry, and then spun her. He also talked about the questions on the origins of math. Is it something that we develop, or does it just naturally exist? In short, are mathematics discovered or invented? And are we here for a purpose? The “thesis committee” made some good points as well, comparing Suri to Descartes, and asking whether we should think of mathematics leading to the universe as Suri describes, or instead the opposite, the universe leading to mathematics. Dr. Suri passed this thesis defense with flying colors, and got to keep his doctorate.
Anyway, he sent his book to the Pope, and the Pope replied positively!
Leave a Reply