Mathe­mat­ics today & in the future – its signif­i­cance in medicine, inter­net & every­day life

Public Sympo­sium on "Mathe­mat­ics & Science Fiction" excites the audience

On July 11, the Hector Fellow Academy and the Berlin-Branden­burg Academy of Sciences and Human­i­ties (BBAW) invited to a public evening event entitled “Mathe­mat­ics and Science Fiction – Visions for the Year 211=2048“. With the focus on the practi­cal appli­ca­tion of mathe­mat­ics in present and future, the event was integrated into the BBAW’s current annual theme “Leibniz: Vision as Task” which is dedicated to the great mathematician.

The welcome by BBAW Presi­dent Prof. Martin Grötschel was followed by two keynote speeches on the current role of mathe­mat­ics by Profes­sor Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, Presi­dent of the European Research Council, and Dr. Georg Schütte, State Secre­tary at the Federal Ministry of Educa­tion and Research.

Profes­sor Christof Schütte, Head of the Zuse Insti­tute Berlin (ZIB), explained in his presen­ta­tion “Medica­tion, Medicine and Mathe­mat­ics” which impor­tant contri­bu­tion mathe­mat­ics makes in the devel­op­ment of novel medica­tion. Mathe­mat­ics enables the efficient concep­tual design of new agents which can signif­i­cantly reduce side effects by their locally limited effec­tive­ness. Only an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary cooper­a­tion of scien­tists – for example from mathe­mat­ics, IT, chemistry and medicine – could come to a success­ful result.