2011-01-22 Professor Shing-Tung Yau's personal sharing at Toronto

Professor Yau is a very nice and humble scholar and mathematician. Graduated in Hong Kong at Pui Ching Middle School and Chung Chi College of the CUHK, he treasured his childhood and school-day experience very much. This video was taken on 22-Jan-2011 in Toronto during an informal dinner gathering with his alumni of Chung Chi and Pui Ching. From here, you can easily experience his crystal-clear vision and mission in action of pursuing TRUTH. Apart from his usual research and teaching tasks at Harvard University, Professor Yau had also dedicated his time and strived for the establishment of several research centres in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China to emphasize the mathematics education and research for the younger generation. Professor Yau hopes to give everyone a sense of how mathematicians think and approach the world and convey the realization that mathematics does not have to be a wholly abstract discipline, disconnected from everyday phenomena, but is instead crucial to our understanding of the physical world.

Professor Yau's work has impacted both mathematics and physics. Calabi-Yau manifolds are among the 'standard toolkit' for string theorists today. He has made fundamental contributions at the interface between geometry and theoretical physics. His proof of the positive energy theorem in general relativity demonstrated sixty years after its discovery that Einstein's theory is consistent and stable. His proof of the Calabi conjecture allowed physicists using Calabi-Yau compactification to show that string theory is a viable candidate for a unified theory of nature.

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