Lectures on History of Science – Lecture 21: Development of the theory and application of classical mechanics before 20th century

Brief introduction to the speaker

Zhang Hongbao, associate professor of Physics Department, Beijing Normal University. He received his bachelor’s degree from physics division of Peking University in 2000 and master’s degree from School of Physics, Peking University in 2003. He then was awarded PhD degree jointly by Beijing Normal University, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and University of Waterloo in 2009. Zhang took his postdoctoral position in Crete Center for Theoretical Physics from 2009 to 2012, Free University of Brussels and International Solvay Institutes in 2013. He was funded by FWO as a researcher from 2014 to 2020. Recently he is interested in Numerical Relativity and its application in AdS/CFT and Astrophysics, and covariant phase space and its application in Quantum Field Theory and quantum gravity. In addition to research in physics, he also devotes his time to the popularization of science.