On Friday June 2, we celebrated the work of Luis Caffarelli, the Winner of the Abel Prize 2023 with an event for schoolkids and bachelor students. Prof. Rob van der Vorst and dr. Oliver Fabert from our department told us how partial differential equations, the field of expertise of Caffarelli, describe many phenomena around us: from the diffusion of heat to the turbulence in fluids. In the picture you see Oliver talking about the turbulence at the confluence of the rivers Danube, Ilz, and Inn in Passau, Germany.
After some refreshments 6 teams participated in a fun quiz with questions about the Abel Prize and recreative mathematics. Congratulations to the team Cygnus who got the first prize! Besides knowing that Karen Uhlenbeck was the first woman to win the Abel Prize in 2019, they could tell what is the ratio between height and width of an A4 paper and what happens to a bike when you pull its pedal backward with a string. A mention of honor to Tiramisu, the guest team made by a representative of our PhD students, who found a very creative way to divide a regular hexagon into 8 equal pieces.