Professor Étienne Ghys, Permanent Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences and Emeritus Research Director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), delivered a thought-provoking HKIAS Distinguished Lecture on “Soccer Balls: Their History, Geometries, and Aerodynamics” on 30 October 2024 at City University of Hong Kong. The event, facilitated by Professor Neil Chada from the Department of Mathematics, attracted a diverse audience of academics and students. Notably, Ms Camélia Aissat, Deputy Consul of Education and Culture and Mr Louis Doucet, Head of Press and Communication from the Consulate General of France in Hong Kong & Macau, also showed keen interest and attended the lecture.
In this lecture, Professor Ghys explored the intricate design and physics of soccer balls, tracing innovations from World Cup designs. He examined how these designs achieve near-perfect spherical shapes and explored the reasons for their varying flight paths, highlighting the “drag crisis phenomenon” well-known in fluid dynamics.
Professor Étienne Ghys is a renowned mathematician known for his contributions to geometry and chaos theory. Since 2019, he has served as the Permanent Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences. As Emeritus Research Director at CNRS, he helped establish the mathematics laboratory at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon. Committed to making mathematics accessible, he has produced educational materials and created “Images des mathématiques,” an online platform with over ten million views. Recognized with awards such as the CNRS Silver Medal and the Clay Award for Dissemination of Mathematical Knowledge, Professor Ghys is dedicated to inspiring a broad audience with the joy of mathematics.
This lecture is supported in part by the Kwang Hua Educational Foundation.
More information about the lecture, please click here.
