Reflections in a cup of coffee
History and Overview
2016-12-21 v1 Algebraic Geometry
Algebraic Topology
Abstract
Allegedly, Brouwer discovered his famous fixed point theorem while stirring a cup of coffee and noticing that there is always at least one point in the liquid that does not move. In this paper, based on a talk in honour of Brouwer at the University of Amsterdam, we will explore how Brouwer's ideas about this phenomenon spilt over in a lot of different areas of mathematics and how this eventually led to an intriguing geometrical theory we now know as mirror symmetry.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1612.06820,
title = {Reflections in a cup of coffee},
author = {Raf Bocklandt},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.06820},
year = {2016}
}