„The extra-scientific in scientific creativity: Galileo's mechanics and Bohr's quantum atom“. Hirzebruch lecture by John Heilbron

John L. Heilbron is Professor of History and Vice-Chancellor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley, and Honorary Fellow, Worcester College, Oxford. His talk is drawn from material in and reflections on his recent books, Galileo (2010) and (with Finn Aaserud) Love, literature, and the quantum atom. Niels Bohr's 1913 trilogy revisited (2013), both from Oxford University Press.

The Hirzebruch Lecture is an annual one hour lecture for a general academic audience featuring a prominent speaker, which aims at illustrating the relation between mathematics and other fields like society, art, etc. It has been established on the occasion of Prof. Friedrich Hirzebruch's 80th birthday in 2007 and is jointly organized by the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics, the University Club, and the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics in Bonn. It is followed by a reception.