WSI Mini Seminar series Event

“Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science” was the title of E. T. Bell’s classic work.
Indeed, the second attribute referring to the role of Mathematics as responsive supporter of Scientific development can be diachronically and amply documented. From ancient mathematics for Astronomical calculation and topography to Calculus and Analytic Geometry for classical Physics, and (jumping to the last century) Maths for fluid mechanics in the 1900’s, for quantum Physics in the 1930’s, “discrete” Maths for Computer Science in the 1960’s, new econometrics math techniques in the 1980’s ,sources for such documentation abound.
Furthermore throughout its fascinating history, Mathematics itself developed via a virtuous feedback process. New definitions and theorems were created to respond to the needs of emerging Science problems (e.g. calculus – Newton), and then evolved further beyond the original “call for service”. Interestingly enough though, many of these further curiosity driven developments came to serve new scientific and technological developments in unexpected ways (e.g. graph theory and printed circuits).
We believe that this decade will see many such developments in what we could call “Mathematics for Web Science”.
Already, significant use is made in current Web Science research by selecting from the vast arsenals of Mathematical Logic, Probability and Statistics, Game theory and other branches of classical Mathematics.
Sometimes work is duplicated (e.g. description logic as a modal logic syntactic variant) and the identification and definition of new challenges for researchers in the classical math subjects which originate in Web Science Research is still largely missing.