The very last session of this year’s ESOF was an EIROforum session. The topic was how can scientists help in science education, and, given the very large audience, is of great interest to ESOF participants.
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A very interesting session took place at ESOF this Sunday on the interplay between Arts and Sciences. On the menu: Dutch paintings and some Jazz!
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At a session on ethics in science journalism, James Cornell of the International Science Writer’s Association recalled the audience that the public generally turns to television as their primary source of information on science. In the US, this means generally cable television. He then mentioned a survey of cable TV showing how the different topics are dealt. Out of a total of 5 hours of information sent, and taking out the commercials, one finds out that 35 minutes deal with politics, almost the same with crime, 10 minutes are about celebrity news, and less than one minute is science news. Frightening! It is thus no coincidence, he concluded, that most Americans are unable to name a leading scientist, and that when they try, they come up with the names of Al Gore and Bill Gates!

Today, the Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy gave the plenary lecture at ESOF. His subject: symmetry!
He started by telling how, under the influence of his mathematics teacher and two books he read (“A mathematician’s apology by G.H. Hardy and “The language of mathematics” by F. Land), he became a mathematician, even though he first wanted to become a secret agent. To this aim, he started to learn many languages, but quickly got frustrated by the lack of logic and the irregular verbs. Mathematics, however, was a language full of logic, where everything made sense.
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Two keynote lectures took place today at ESOF, around the theme of the Universe and reality. The first one was by Gerry Gilmore, Professor of Experimental Philosophy in Cambridge, UK, and his aim was to give an “introduction from the point of view of the Universe”.
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