Mathematicians can be fascinated by the elegance and beauty of the ideas behind mathematical theories. Mathematical structures are already out there and our goal is to discover them.
On a quiet afternoon, professor Meth is working in her office in Leiden on some tantalizing mathematics problems. Suddenly, someone knocking on her door nervously disrupts the silence.
In this article, dear reader, I am going to show you in which way the development of your opinion during the last political issue, the spread of a virus among your acquaintances during the current pandemic, and the alignment of some particles lying inside the device from which you are reading this article are extremely comparable phenomena.
Imagine you’re in a remote village and only have a limited number of vaccines to distribute to protect the community from a deadly virus, who do you vaccinate?
A difficult decision, but necessary. Assuming that the disease is just as deadly for everyone in the community, the best way to prevent deaths is to contain the spread of the virus.
A mathematician once told me that problems that are very simple to state can be very deceiving, and sometimes turn out to be extremely difficult to solve. One such problem was the Four Color Problem.
During the last decades, many resources have been invested in quantum computing. This research field has grown immensely and amazing results have been obtained. The plans for the future are highly ambitious, but at the same time, there are serious questions that need to be addressed.
