Mathematician Avi Wigderson will present a free, public lecture titled “Randomness” from 3:30-4:30 p.m., Friday, Oct. 21, in 103 Gore Hall on the University of Delaware’s Newark campus.

The talk will focus on a computational theory of randomness that has been developed in the past three decades.

Wigderson asks these questions: Is the universe inherently deterministic or probabilistic? And, perhaps more importantly, can we tell the difference?

Randomness seems indispensable, Wigderson says, used in a wide variety of applications including statistics, cryptography, game theory, algorithms and gambling. However, the computational theory he will discuss in his talk reveals that very little is actually lost in a universe that has only poor-quality randomness arising from “unpredictable” phenomena like the weather or the stock market.

Wigderson is the Herbert H. Maass Professor in the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He works in the theory of computation, a field that studies the mathematical foundations of computer science.

His research interests include algorithms, Boolean and arithmetic circuit complexity, communication and proof complexity, cryptography and randomness, as well as the interactions of the field with other sciences such as mathematics, physics, biology and economics.

His honors include being a two-time invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians, where he received the 1994 Nevanlinna Prize for outstanding contributions in mathematical aspects of information sciences.

Wigderson was an invited speaker at the American Mathematical Society Gibbs Lectures and the recipient of the Conant Prize. He received the 2009 Gödel Prize, which recognizes outstanding papers in theoretical computer science, and in 2013 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.