01 Nov 2021
Setting it Straight: The second Nobel year in the time of COVID-19: Modelling complexity
Continuing on from last week (#80), how does the 2021 Nobel Physics award for climate systems science have any special relevance to COVID-19? The answer is that it’s basically a prize for mathematical insights and strategies that facilitate the analysis of complex systems and enable the prediction of likely trends and consequences. Climate is massively complex, but so is normal human biology and, interfacing that with the need to deal with a foreign invader, a pathogen like SARS-CoV-2, takes us to an even higher level of complexity.