ESP Biography



LE NGUYEN HOANG, MIT Postdoc & Science4All writer




Major: EECS

College/Employer: MIT

Year of Graduation: Not available.

Picture of Le Nguyen Hoang

Brief Biographical Sketch:

I am a postdoc in LIDS, MIT. My research focuses on online optimization, game theory and related topics.

I am also a math and science popularizer. I write on Science4All.org, and make videos on the Science4All Youtube channel. Some of my favourite topics include, but are definitely not limited to, math foundations, computer science, history of math, general relativity, quantum mechanics...



Past Classes

  (Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

S9681: Why do apples fall? From Galileo to Einstein in Splash 2015 (Nov. 21 - 22, 2015)
This question has puzzled great thinkers for centuries, but it's only in the early 20th century that Albert Einstein would finally provide a full explanation of the falling of the apples. In this class, we review the history of the theories of gravity, starting with Aristotle, Galileo, Newton and ending with Einstein. The class is based on this article: http://www.science4all.org/le-nguyen-hoang/gravity/


M9682: The Math Foundation Crisis in Splash 2015 (Nov. 21 - 22, 2015)
You might have learned that mathematics was the only field that proves true statements. But a century ago, it wasn't clear at all that mathematics had anything to do with "a" truth, let alone "the" truth --- it's still not clear today! In this class, we review the infamous math foundation crisis of the turn of the century, from the overthrowing of Euclid's elements and Russell's paradox, to surprising fundamental 20th century theorems like the Banach-Tarski paradox, the continuum hypothesis and Gödel's incompleteness theorem.


M9683: The Mathematics of Democracy in Splash 2015 (Nov. 21 - 22, 2015)
Do our voting systems elect the people's favourite candidate? Short answer: no. The theory of voting systems has a long history, and mathematics has a lot to say in that theory. In fact, early on, in the 1700s, debates over voting systems already opposed two mathematicians, Condorcet and de Borda. Over 200 years later, impressive progress has been made by, among others, Arrow, Gibbard, Satterthwaite... but the debate is still there!


C9685: Cryptographers vs hackers... who'll win? in Splash 2015 (Nov. 21 - 22, 2015)
For centuries, cryptographers have tried to secretly send encoded messages, and hackers have tried to crack the messages. In those days, cracking a message could win wars and save millions of lives, as Turing did. More recently, this opposition has been formalized within computer science, and we understand better than ever the essence of it... but we are still largely ignorant. In this class, I'll mention historical encryption methods, as well as modern open questions every computer scientist dreams to have the answer to.