As flowers bloomed in April, the long-overdue 2022 Spring Huxin Lecture Series took place. Due to the pandemic, this event differed slightly from its predecessors. We gathered online and invited Prof. Gang Tian, a renowned mathematician, and Prof. Jiang Xu, a celebrated oil painter, to join us to discuss the origin of the world from different perspectives, that of science and art, and walk into the depths of, well, everything.

Prof. Gang Tian

Tian, a prominent mathematician, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and dean of the Institute of Theoretical Sciences at Westlake University, discussed the beauty of mathematics. He pointed out that the magic of mathematics is how it expresses the complexity and changes of the world and the universe around it through its simplicity and precision. From the beauty of abstraction and simplicity in mathematics to the beauty of unity, there are many wonderful laws with incredible depth.

Tian said, "We may not all be able to see what is in the depths of all things, but all things in the world must develop and evolve according to certain laws; the changes in the objective world are endless, and I believe there are always fellow travelers who are determined to pursue scientific truth."

Prof. Jiang Xu

Science and art often complement each other. After Tian painted the vast starry sky of mathematics, Xu, an oil painter who also serves as vice chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and president of the Chinese Oil Painting Society, presented the enlightened history of aesthetic education in China and the significance of aesthetic education in the new era: "When we talk about aesthetic education, it is not only aesthetic education in art colleges and universities, but also the aesthetic education for young people.”Xu emphasized that in this new era, true aesthetic education will maintain a deep-rooted sensibility.

Whether it was the beauty of mathematics shared by Tian or the ideas of aesthetics put forward by Xu, the event aroused thoughts about the beauty of all things. In the final dialogue session of the event, the two guests and Westlake President Yigong Shi discussed the connection between science and art.