Special Colloquium

Title: Symmetries in Nature and Culture

Speaker: Prof. Akito Arima, Musashi University

Location: Room 111, Physics Building

Time: 15:00-16:00, Wed, Dec 23, 2014 ; 16:30-17:30, Thu, Dec 24, 2014 ;

Abstract:

I shall begin very briefly with symmetry in flowers and trees in nature, then I shall discuss the different attitudes to symmetry for Europeans, Chinese and Japanese in buildings, gardens and paintings, with the conclusion that Europeans stick to symmetry strictly, Chinese break the symmetry slightly, and Japanese no symmetry. Different attitudes also affect our thoughts in science. That is why the left-right symmetry was suggested to be broken by Lee and Yang, and demonstrated in the famous beta-decay experiment by Madame Wu and her collaborators. In Cosmology, the matter and antimatter symmetry puzzled us very much, and Japanese physicists came to help in understanding the problem.
Finally I shall discuss dynamical symmetries in nuclear physics.