BANDUNG, fmipa.itb.ac.id. -Professor Avi Wigderson, Professor of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, United States) and one of the world’s leading mathematicians and computer scientists in the research fields of complexity theory, parallel algorithms, graph theory, cryptography, distributed computing, and neural networks, on Friday, June 23, 2023 at 19.00-20.30 WIB gave a guest lecture in the “Mathematics Distinguished Lecture Series (MDLS)” series at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences (FMIPA), Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB). The title of the lecture was “Randomness”.

Is the universe inherently deterministic or probabilistic? Perhaps more importantly, can we differentiate between them? Humanity has pondered the meaning and use of randomness for thousands of years. There are incredible ways that humanity has utilized the perfect coin toss in statistics, cryptography, game theory, and algorithms. Indeed, randomness seems indispensable! Which of these applications would survive if the universe had no randomness at all? Which of these applications survives if only poor quality randomness is available, for example arising from unpredictable phenomena such as the weather or the stock market? A computational theory of randomness, developed in the last three decades, reveals (perhaps counter-intuitively) that very little is lost in such deterministic or weakly random worlds. In this lecture, Prof. Avi Wigderson explained the main ideas and results of this theory.

Prof. Edy Tri Baskoro, Chair of the 2023 MDLS Committee, said that Professor Avi Wigderson is one of the world’s mathematicians and computer scientists who has made extraordinary contributions to the fields of mathematics and computer science. He has written around 276 publications in Scopus indexed scientific journals with a total of 17,460 citations and an h-index of 57. “Wigderson received the Nevanlinna Prize in 1994 for his work on computational complexity. Together with Omer Reingold and Salil Vadhan, he won the 2009 Gödel Prize for his work on zig-zag graph multiplication, a method of combining smaller graphs to produce larger graphs used in constructing expander graphs. In 2019, Wigderson was awarded the Knuth Prize for his contributions to the foundations of computer science in areas including random computing, cryptography, circuit complexity, proof complexity, parallel computing, and our understanding of fundamental graph properties. In 2021, Wigderson shared the Abel Prize with László Lovász for their fundamental contributions to theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics, and their central role in shaping them into major fields of modern mathematics,” he added.

This MDLS activity has been organized by the Mathematics Study Program, FMIPA ITB since 2021 by presenting speakers who are world figures in various fields of mathematics. In 2021, four editions had been organized with presenting the following speakers: Prof. Motoko Kotani (Japan), Prof. Christophe Ritzenthaler (France), Prof. Hans Munthe-Kaas (Norway), and Prof. Richard A. Brualdi (United States). In 2022, six editions had been organized with presenting the following speakers: Prof. Martin Hairer (England), Prof. Edy Soewono (Indonesia), Prof. Marta Sanz-Sole (Spain), Prof. Gil Kalai (Israel), Prof. Gang Tian (China), and Prof. Efim Zelmanov (United States). This year, Prof. Avi Wigderson was the first speaker at MDLS 2023. This first edition was attended by around 90 participants (lecturers, researchers, and undergraduate and graduate students) from various universities in Indonesia, the United States, Japan, the Philippines, and several other countries. Professor Avi Wigderson's MDLS recordings can be viewed at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VhZ1oM3xy8&list=PLjs4VVzVn2XvscwQbQ_LHPcuwwS-EXTRE&index=11 .
Further information regarding the next edition of MDLS can be seen at https://math.itb.ac.id/mdls/.