Interview with Steven Strogatz

Elena Holodny in Business Insider:

Elena Holodny: What's interesting in chaos theory right now?

Steven Strogatz: I'm often very interested in whatever my students get interested in. I primarily think of myself as a teacher and a guide. I try to help them – especially my Ph.D. students – become the mathematicians they're trying to become. The answer often depends on what they want to do.

In broad terms, the question of how order emerges out of chaos. Even though we talk about it as “chaos theory,” I'm really more interested in the orderly side of nature than the chaotic side. And I love the idea that things can organize themselves. Whether those things are our system of morality or our universe or our bodies as we grow from a single cell to the people we eventually become. All this kind of unfolding of structure and organization all around us and inside of us, to me, is inspiring and baffling. I live for that kind of thing, to try to understand where these patterns come from.

More here.