Complexity Science and the Nobel Prize in Physics 2021

Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann, and Giorgio Parisi (Illustration: Niklas Elmehed for Nobel Prize Outreach©)

Virtual Discussion

US Mountain Time

December 8, 2021 – December 9, 2021

This event is closed to the public.

2021 marked the first time the Nobel Prize committee explicitly mentioned complex systems in their description of an award. To celebrate this, and the year more broadly, SFI’s Applied Complexity Network is hosting a special two-session, end-of-year meeting. The first session will focus on explaining spin glasses, Parisi’s solution, and its implications. Although other treatments of Parisi’s work can be quite technical, this talk is geared for a general, but scientifically literate, audience. In the second session, a panel of complexity scientists will debate the legacy, challenges, and opportunities for spin systems in complexity science.

SESSION ONE: PARISI'S SOLUTION & BEYOND!

DATE	Wednesday, December 8, 2021
TIME	10AM to 11:30AM Mountain Standard Time
SPEAKER	Daniel Stein (Professor of Physics and Mathematics at New York University, and External Professor and Science Board Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute)
ABSTRACT	This year the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann, and Giorgio Parisi for "groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems''. Manabe and Hasselmann were awarded the prize for their contributions to climate science, while Parisi's citation reads "for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales” With a focus on the second half of this year's prize, this talk will explain Parisi's primary contribution to complexity science and its applications to problems in biology, computer science, and other areas. Before describing Parisi's famous solution to a model of spin glasses, this talk will introduce the concept of spin glasses, review experimental and theoretical work aimed at understanding their nature, and discuss why a material of little technological use has attained such a prominent role in our understanding of disorder and (more generally) complexity in nature. This talk will be nontechnical and aimed at a general scientifically literate audience.

SESSION TWO: SPIN SYSTEMS & COMPLEXITY TODAY

DATE	Thursday, December 9, 2021
TIME	10AM to 11AM Mountain Standard Time
PANELISTS	Jonas Dalege (Program Postdoctoral Fellow, Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute), Jessica Flack (Professor, C4 Director, and Science Board Member at the Santa Fe Institute), Eddie Lee (Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow at Complexity Science Hub Vienna) Cris Moore (Professor and Science Board Member at the Santa Fe Institute), David Sherrington (Emeritus Wykeham Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and External Faculty Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute), Geoffrey West (Past President, Shannan Distinguished Professor, and Science Steering Committee Member at the Santa Fe Institute), and David Wolpert (Professor at the Santa Fe Institute)
ABSTRACT	The idea for this panel grew out of a discussion in an SFI Faculty Meeting, in which the 2021 Nobel Prize sparked substantive debate over the legacy, challenges, and opportunities for spin systems in complexity science. Specifically, the panel will address: (i) how spin systems have impacted complexity science; (ii) the limitations of these models in advancing contemporary complexity research; and (iii) the most important domains for their future applications.