{"id":22260,"date":"2025-02-14T09:00:17","date_gmt":"2025-02-14T10:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=22260"},"modified":"2025-02-14T10:34:09","modified_gmt":"2025-02-14T10:34:09","slug":"whats-best-according-to-the-italian-mathematician-alessio-figalli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=22260","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s Best, According to the Italian Mathematician Alessio Figalli"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Alessio Figalli studies optimal transport, a field of math that ranges from the movements of clouds to the workings of chatbots.<\/p>\n

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The words \u201coptimal\u201d and \u201coptimize\u201d derive from the Latin \u201coptimus,\u201d or \u201cbest,\u201d as in \u201cmake the best of things.\u201d Alessio Figalli, a mathematician at the university ETH Zurich, studies optimal transport: the most efficient allocation of starting points to end points. The scope of investigation is wide, including clouds, crystals, bubbles and chatbots.<\/p>\n

Dr. Figalli, who was awarded the Fields Medal in 2018, likes math that is motivated by concrete problems found in nature. He also likes the discipline\u2019s \u201csense of eternity,\u201d he said in a recent interview. \u201cIt is something that will be here forever.\u201d (Nothing is forever, he conceded, but math will be around for \u201clong enough.\u201d) \u201cI like the fact that if you prove a theorem, you prove it,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s no ambiguity, it\u2019s true or false. In a hundred years, you can rely on it, no matter what.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study of optimal transport was introduced almost 250 years ago by Gaspard Monge, a French mathematician and politician who was motivated by problems in military engineering. His ideas found broader application solving logistical problems during the Napoleonic Era \u2014 for instance, identifying the most efficient way to build fortifications, in order to minimize the costs of transporting materials across Europe.<\/p>\n

In 1975, the Russian mathematician Leonid Kantorovich shared the Nobel in economic science<\/a> for refining a rigorous mathematical theory for the optimum allocation of resources. \u201cHe had an example with bakeries and coffee shops,\u201d Dr. Figalli said. The optimization goal in this case was to ensure that on a daily basis every bakery delivered all its croissants, and every coffee shop got all the croissants desired.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s called a global wellness optimization problem in the sense that there is no competition between bakeries, no competition between coffee shops,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not like optimizing the utility of one player. It is optimizing the global utility of the population. And that\u2019s why it\u2019s so complex: because if one bakery or one coffee shop does something different, this will influence everyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n

The following conversation with Dr. Figalli \u2014 conducted at an event in New York City organized by the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute and in interviews before and after \u2014 has been condensed and edited for clarity.<\/p>\n

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Alessio Figalli studies optimal transport, a field of math that ranges from the movements of clouds to the workings of chatbots.The words \u201coptimal\u201d and \u201coptimize\u201d derive from the Latin \u201coptimus,\u201d or \u201cbest,\u201d as in \u201cmake the best of things.\u201d Alessio Figalli, a mathematician at the university ETH Zurich, studies optimal transport: the most efficient allocation of starting points to end points. The scope of investigation is wide, including clouds, crystals, bubbles and chatbots.Dr. Figalli, who was awarded the Fields Medal in 2018, likes math that is motivated by concrete problems found in nature. He also likes the discipline\u2019s \u201csense of eternity,\u201d he said in a recent interview. \u201cIt is something that will be here forever.\u201d (Nothing is forever, he conceded, but math will be around for \u201clong enough.\u201d) \u201cI like the fact that if you prove a theorem, you prove it,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s no ambiguity, it\u2019s true or false. In a hundred years, you can rely on it, no matter what.\u201dThe study of optimal transport was introduced almost 250 years ago by Gaspard Monge, a French mathematician and politician who was motivated by problems in military engineering. His ideas found broader application solving logistical problems during the Napoleonic Era \u2014 for instance, identifying the most efficient way to build fortifications, in order to minimize the costs of transporting materials across Europe.In 1975, the Russian mathematician Leonid Kantorovich shared the Nobel in economic science for refining a rigorous mathematical theory for the optimum allocation of resources. \u201cHe had an example with bakeries and coffee shops,\u201d Dr. Figalli said. The optimization goal in this case was to ensure that on a daily basis every bakery delivered all its croissants, and every coffee shop got all the croissants desired.\u201cIt\u2019s called a global wellness optimization problem in the sense that there is no competition between bakeries, no competition between coffee shops,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not like optimizing the utility of one player. It is optimizing the global utility of the population. And that\u2019s why it\u2019s so complex: because if one bakery or one coffee shop does something different, this will influence everyone else.\u201dThe following conversation with Dr. Figalli \u2014 conducted at an event in New York City organized by the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute and in interviews before and after \u2014 has been condensed and edited for clarity.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22262,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22260"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22263,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22260\/revisions\/22263"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}