------------------------------------------------------------------------------ B O S T O N U N I V E R S I T Y Computer Science Department C O L L O Q U I U M Wednesday, March 5, 1997 3:00 pm (Coffee served at 2:45 pm, Room MCS 137) Room MCS 135 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ HOW MUCH OF PHYSICS IS JUST COMPUTATION? Prof. Tom Toffoli Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Boston University 44 Cummington Street Boston, MA 02215 tt@bu.edu When it was invented, entropy was thought to belong to hard-hat physicists; we now know there is nothing especially physical about it: it is just a ``counting'' concept, and belongs to physicists only insofar as physicists do a lot of counting. Many more concepts that seemed to be intimately tied to physics are turning out to be, at bottom, mere ``computer science'' concepts. We shall present a number of surprising examples. Host: Prof. Steve Homer ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ For colloquium info, including directions, see http://www.cs.bu.edu/colloquium For more information contact Prof. David Yates ------------------------------------------------------------------------------