Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences Gave a Special Lecture to Students - Campus Focus

Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences Gave a Special Lecture to Students
Click: Post Date:2019-09-26 11:00:00 Event Date:2019-09-26 11:00:00

In the evening of Sep. 23^rd, Yuan Yaxiang, an academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences(CAS), was invited to give a special lecture on Golden Section and Optimization Methods at Zhiyuan Hall on the first floor of the library of the High School Attached to NWNU, which was presided over by Jia Jinyuan, the Principal of the High School Attached to NWNU, and was also attended by other leaders including Chen Bingdong, Vice-president and Party Secretary of China Association for Science and Technology(CAST) in Gansu. In a warm atmosphere, some Senior Two students from Hong Yu Experiment Class for Science, Chang Xu Experiment Class for Engineering and Yong Zheng Experiment Class for Creation, as well as faculty of math teaching group listened to the lecture with applauses bursting out now and then.

Academician Yuan is now the Vice President of CAST, the Chairman of China Society of Mathematics, the Honorary Chairman of Operations Research Society of China and the President-elect of International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Except for being an academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences, he is also the Corresponding Member of Brazilian Academy of Sciences and Member of the World Academy of Sciences. What’s more, he is also the delegate of the 19^th CPC National Congress and member of the Standing Committee of CPPCC. He has once worked as the vice dean of Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science of CAS, director of Institute of Computational Mathematics and Scientific Engineering Computing and dean of “Sciences and Engineering Computing” State Key Laboratory.

Yuan’s lecture started from the golden section of five-pointed stars on the national flag, continued to explain numerous problems related to optimization in daily lives by citing examples such as the Optimization Methods put forward by Loo-Keng Hua, the story about Tian Ji's strategy for a horse racing and problems concerning Chinese postmen. He pointed out that any problems requiring to be decided should be optimized. The optimization is required in many scientific fields such as mechanics (minimum weight, maximum load and optimal structure), materials science (minimum energy), finance (maximum profit and minimum risk) and transportation (maximum benefits, timetable and resuming operations). The problem of optimization boils down to algorithm and the matter of teaching. Therefore, it’s important to learn math well while the most important thing is to learn the thoughts about math.
Yuan’s lecture contributes to arousing the students’ curiosity in math and the students actively asked questions to interact with the academician. Yuan encouraged students to learn math well and make every choice reasonably so as to optimize the life. The students learned the real truth about how to acquire knowledge and how to be a moral person.

On behalf of the High School Attached to NWNU, principal Jia thanked Yuan for his excellent presentation, declaring that Yuan’s visit is a great honor for the recent academic development of the high school, greatly inspiring students to learn math well so as to become outstanding national talents in scientific area in the future.
The event is organized by Gansu CAST and the Publicity Department of CPC Lanzhou Municipal Committee and hosted by Gansu Project Management Institute and the High School Attached to NWNU.