DEEP BEAUTY SYMPOSIUM
The opening event of the series was the symposium, “Deep Beauty: Mathematical Innovation and the Search for an Underlying Intelligibility of the Quantum World,” held on October 3 and 4, 2007. The venue was the Nassau Inn, adjacent to Princeton University where von Neumann taught and just a few minutes’ walk from his final resting place. The symposium’s purpose, besides paying tribute to the 75th anniversary of the publication of von Neumann’s classic work, Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, was to develop a better understanding of the nature of quantum mechanics since von Neumann and thereby probe further into the nature of the universe.
The convener of the symposium was Dr. Charles Harper, Jr., Senior Executive Vice President of the Templeton Foundation, and the sessions were chaired by Hans Halvorson, associate professor in the department of philosophy at Princeton University. “The conversations between talks were incredibly lively and spirited,” Halvorson reported later. “Several of the speakers commented to me that they appreciated the small and intimate atmosphere of the symposium.”
Altogether, ten papers on the quantum world were presented to the symposium, provoking discussion on topics which Halvorson predicted “will have a profound impact in pushing scientific knowledge in the direction of uncovering the most fundamental intelligibility of the universe.” To promote that impetus, Halvorson is editing a volume, the working title of which is also Deep Beauty, that will consist of insights from category theory and the theory of operator algebras to quantum theory, as well as to information theory, probability, and ideas of determinism

“Deep Beauty” Symposium Participants

Chair Hans Halvorson Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Princeton University Keynote Speaker John Baez Professor of Mathematics, University of California, Riverside Speakers Caslav Brukner Associate Professor of Physics, University of Vienna Jeffrey Bub Distinguished University Professor, Department of Philosophy and the Institute for Physical Science and Technology, University of Maryland Bob Coecke University Lecturer in Quantum Computer Science, EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow, and Fellow of Wolfson College, University of Oxford

Andreas Döring Theoretical Physics Group, Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine, London, UK Lucien Hardy Institute for Quantum Computing, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo (Ontario), Canada Simon B. Kochen Henry Burchard Fine Professor of Mathematics, Princeton University Nicolaas P. (Klaas) Landsman Institute for Mathematics, Astrophysics, and Particle Physics, Department of Science, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, The Netherlands Miklós Rédei Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK Stephen J. Summers Professor of Mathematics, University of Florida, Gainesville

Online Discussants and Book Contributors Jeremy N. Butterfield Fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge Hans F. de Groote Institut für Analysis und Mathematische Physik, Johann Wolfgang Christopher J. Isham Professor of Theoretical Physics, Imperial College, London, UK Special Guests Freeman J. Dyson Professor Emeritus, School of Natural Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton Peter Woit Department of Mathematics, Columbia University, New York