On Growth and Form: Geometry, Physics and Biology
Simons Foundation Lectures are free public colloquia related to basic science and mathematics. These high-level talks are intended for professors, students, postdocs and business professionals, but interested people from the metropolitan area are welcome as well.

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Of the diversity of living form, Charles Darwin said, “It is enough to drive the sanest man mad.” A century and a half later, how can we quantify, understand and predict this variety? How might we control it? Motivated by biological observations on scales ranging from molecular to histological, L. Mahadevan will explain how a combination of biological and physical experiments, together with mathematical models and computations, begin to unravel the physical basis for morphogenesis. He will go on to explore how these pan-disciplinary problems enrich the origins of this topic, creating new questions in mathematics, physics and biology.
Speaker
L. Mahadevan, Ph.D.
Harvard University