A distinguished Professor of Mathematics at the University of New Mexico, Gallup, United States of America (USA), Florentin Smarandache, has visited the University to give further elucidation on the applications of neutrosophic set, as propounded by him. Professor Florentin Smarandache, a Romanian-American, who was visiting Nigeria for the first time, spoke to students from the Department of Mathematics, College of Physical Sciences (COLPHYS), saying that the neutrosophic set and logic deal with three components: Degree of Truth-Membership; Degree of Indeterminacy and Degree of Falsehood-Nonmembership.
The Mathematician stressed that while neutrosophic probability and statistics were generalisations of classical and imprecise probability and statistics. According to him, the theory could be applied in Engineering, Finance, Robotics, Information Fusion, Medicine and Management, among others. The Dean of COLPHYS, Professor Amidu Mustapha, said that “We welcome a great Mathematician in our midst. I think we should all consider it a privilege because the person in front of us is not an ordinary Mathematician”. Professor Mustapha noted that Professor Smarandache was a founder of a unique aspect of mathematics. According to him, “It’s not everyday that you see and converse with a founder of an area of knowledge, it is on that note I consider all of us to be privileged and fortunate”.
The Director, Information and Communications Technology Resource Centre (ICTREC), Professor Adeshina Agboola, who is also a co-researcher with Professor Samarandache on the neutrosophic set, reeled out his achievements in the area of neutrosophic theory, developed in 1995 and the theory of the fuzzy sets by Lofti Zadeh, developed in 1965, which he said were widely acknowledged and embraced in many countries in Asia. He added further that many books and journals had been written, based on the theory. Neutrosophy is a branch of philosophy which means the knowledge of neutralthought, which studies the origin, nature, and scope of neutralities, as well as their interactions with different ideational spectra. The words “neutrosophy” and “neutrosophic” were invented by him while books were also donated to the Department of Mathematics by Professor Samarandache at the occasion.