Ancient history of Chinese mathematics according to Yau

This morning, Yau was walking by me when he turned to me and said, "I'm giving a talk tonight on the history of Chinese mathematics." I asked where; he told me it would be on the 5th floor of the math building. I decided I would go; Yau always has interesting things to say, no matter what the topic. But I figured it would be an informal lecture to a small audience. What was I thinking?

After dinner, I decided to take Nicholas along. When we arrived on the 5th floor, I saw Zhongmin Shen talking to some people. He turned to me and said, "there aren't any seats". I assured him that there were people bringing up more chairs. But when Nick and I entered the lecture hall, we realized that a few more chairs just wasn't going to be enough. It was literally wall-to-wall people. Every seat was taken, and people were lined up against the side and back walls. The extra chairs that were brought in were for the "foreign VIP's" only. I took a look around and decided that Nick and I could sit on the floor in front of the chairs.

The lecture was very interesting, especially when Yau would interject his own views about China versus other countries and cultures. He is not afraid to talk about when China did things detrimental to itself. What was also fascinating and very convincing to me, despite the lack of explicit evidence, is the cross-fertilization of knowledge, including mathematics, between the different civilizations even thousands of years ago.




The man with his hand on his chin is the number theorist John Coates. Further down to his right is Henry Pinkham of Columbia.




There was even a television cameraman filming the audience and Yau.