LOUISVILLE, Ky.-Pulitzer Prize-winning author Douglas Hofstadter will speak April 5 at the University of Louisville about “Unexpected Puns Lurking in the Heart of Mathematics.”
Hofstadter, Indiana University professor and director of its Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, will give the annual Bullitt Lecture offered by U of L’s mathematics department.
The 7 p.m. event and reception afterward are free and open to the public in the Comstock Concert Hall, School of Music.
Hofstadter won the literary prize for general nonfiction in 1980 for his book “Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.” The best seller probed thought, creativity, artificial intelligence and number theory while examining Kurt Godel’s mathematics, M.C. Escher’s art and J.S. Bach’s music.
Hofstadter has written and edited other books, including “The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul,” “Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern” and “Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought.”
Also while at U of L, Hofstadter will discuss his 1999 translation of Alexander Pushkin’s novel in verse “Eugene Onegin” during a Liberal Studies Project luncheon event. His noon talk April 6 will be in the University Club’s Mary Bingham Room; lunch is complimentary but reservations for that event are required by April 3 by calling (502) 852-2247. His topic is “Translation of Pushkin’s Novel ‘Eugene Onegin’ – Paradox, Magic, Deception.”
At Indiana University, Hofstadter is a professor of cognitive science and computer science and is an adjunct professor of philosophy, psychology and comparative literature. As a researcher, Hofstadter studies creativity and consciousness, including the relationship between words and concepts, and mathematical discovery and invention.
The Bullitt family endowed the U of L lectureship in 1991 to honor former U.S. Solicitor General William Marshall Bullitt’s enthusiasm for mathematics.
For more information, call Manav Das or Inessa Levi at (502) 852-6826 or check www.math.louisville.edu/news/index.html.