Two renowned scientists discussed L-function and materials informatics, respectively, at talks for the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) Distinguished Lecture Series at City University of Hong Kong recently.

They were Professor Zhang Shouwu from the Department of Mathematics at Princeton University and Professor Zhang Tongyi, Founding Dean of the Materials Genome Institute at Shanghai University.

Professor Zhang Shouwu said in his talk titled “L-function: its past and future” on 30 January that the history of searching for a formula for finite sums had led to the work of Euler on infinite sums.

He said the game of calculus had unfolded secrets of primes in the work of Euler, Dirichlet and Riemann in the 18th and 19th centuries, adding that the study of L-function had become a central topic in number theory under the framework of Langlands programme and arithmetic geometry from the 20th to the 21st century.

Professor Zhang Shouwu received the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2009 and was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011.

 

Professor Zhang Shouwu received the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2009 and was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011.

On 9 February, Professor Zhang Tongyi delivered a lecture titled “Materials Genome Initiative and Materials Informatics”. He said preliminary work about the data-driven development of a formula of time, stress and temperature dependent deformation and the Bayesian statistical analysis of the size-dependent strength of concrete illustrated the concept of materials informatics.

He believed that financial support from funding agents and data sharing within the materials community could help build up a materials database.

Professor Zhang Tongyi has been awarded the Second Prize in the State Natural Science Award on two occasions. He was elected Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences in 2012 and Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2011, among other honours.