The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Physics in Modern Mathematics
Prof. Dr. Robbert H. Dijkgraaf (Universität Amsterdam)

Various branches of theoretical physics, in particular quantum field theory and string theory, have had a remarkable impact on mathematics. This has given rise to a fruitful interaction, where not only mathematics is used to solve physical problems, but where the unfamiliar physical intuition of the quantum world is used to generate new mathematical concepts that can be used to solve long standing problems in pure mathematics. I will give examples of this phenomenon in, among others, knot theory and algebraic geometry -- fields that have been completely transformed by physics.