STARTING SHORTLY at 16:30 hrs in Budinich Lecture Hall: ICTP Colloquium by Prof. J-P Eckmann on "Optics, Vision, and Evolution, after Mitchell Feigenbaum 1944-2019"

[ICTP/infopoint]

ICTP is pleased to announce that the forthcoming ICTP Colloquium on 
"Optics, Vision, and Evolution, after Mitchell Feigenbaum 1944-2019"  by 
Jean-Pierre Eckmann will take place TODAY, Tuesday 17 September 2019, at 
16:30 hrs, in the Budinich Lecture Hall, Leonardo Building, ICTP.
*
Biosketch: *Jean-Pierre Eckmann is professor of Physics and Mathematics 
at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, where he has spent his whole 
academic life. He works on many aspects of mathematical physics, such as 
ergodic theory of dynamicla systems, and head conduction.

*Abstract: *Some people in the audience may be aware of Feigenbaum's 
astonishing discovery of the universality of period doubling, and the 
constant delta=4.66920 which carries his name. However, Mitchell 
Feigenbaum worked, in the last 13 years of his life, on other subjects, 
and wrote the manuscript (in TeX) of a book the title of which is: 
"Reflections on a Tube". This is closely related to his life-long 
interest in optics and aspects of vision. It deals with the optics of 
images reflected in a cylindrical mirror (usually called anamorphic 
pictures). He shows that the eye does not interpret ray-tracing, but 
caustics. But there are two caustics, and therefore, the viewer can 
actually see two different images in two different places. The visual 
system will often prefer one over the other. The question is the "which" 
and "why"? Starting from this discovery, Feigenbaum derived other 
aspects of this observation, dealing with the vision of fish, the 
"broken" pencil in water, or aspects of the floor of swimming pools. All 
these examples show two possible images. His study shows how a question 
in classical optics can lead to the interesting question in perception 
and the visual system.

More information is available at http://indico.ictp.it/event/9048/

Light refreshments will be served after the talk.

You are all very warmly invited to attend.

With best regards,

Office of the Director, ICTP


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