50 years of Rubik’s Cube celebrated at Christ’s College, Cambridge
Anyone who remembers the Rubik’s Cube as a much-cherished part of their childhood would have enjoyed the visit to Cambridge on Monday (11 November) by none other than Professor Ernő Rubik himself, who invented the famous puzzle 50 years ago this year.
Professor Rubik was joined at the special ‘Rubik’s @ 50’ all-day event by fellow Hungarian Judit Polgár, who is widely regarded as the greatest female chess player of all time.
This ‘day of talks, discussions, networking, demonstrations and fun, celebrating the impact of 50 years of the Rubik’s Cube’ began in the morning with ‘Puzzles and Autism’, which looked at why it is that autistic people are able to show original insight with abstract puzzles.
Chairing the talk was Paul Ramchandani, Lego Professor of Play at the University of Cambridge.
Those also taking part included Prof Sir Simon Baron-Cohen, who presented ideas from his book The Pattern Seekers, which looks at how autistic people think about puzzles, and Prof Jenny Gibson, a professor of neurodiversity and developmental psychology at the University of Cambridge.
The talks were followed by demonstrations and reflections by Max Park, ambassador for the Autism Centre of Excellence at Cambridge, and Derek Paravicini, a world-renowned pianist who is congenitally blind, autistic, and has a learning disability.
In the afternoon, ‘Puzzles and Innovation’, chaired by Lord Simon McDonald, master of Christ’s College, looked at how puzzles ‘unlock the spark of human creativity and stimulate inventiveness, design, and artistry’.
Also present were David Silver, of Google DeepMind, the innovator behind AlphaGo, Prof James WP Campbell, an architect and design historian from the University of Cambridge – who talked about the relationship of Rubik’s work with architecture and design – and Jim Hogan, chief innovation evangelist at Google Cloud.
Further talks on puzzles and mathematics and puzzles and education followed, along with a ‘Festival of Puzzling’ before Prof Rubik and Judit Polgár sat down to answer questions put to them by Paul Ramchandani concerning their lives and very successful careers.
He then opened up the floor to audience members in the Yusuf Hamied Theatre.
After the interesting discussion, Prof Rubik talked to the Cambridge Independent.
On what it is about the Rubik’s Cube that has made it so popular these past five decades, Prof Rubik said: “I don’t know... part of it’s very fundamental, very classic, and the other part is very new, because those kinds of movements in practical objects hadn’t existed before – and many other things.
“And it’s a challenge; traditional puzzles are popular but not at that level, usually. After 50 years, the reaction of the kids is the same.”
Ernő Rubik, a Hungarian architecture professor, created a prototype of a three-dimensional cube back in 1974. In the years following, it was used by Rubik to teach his students about three-dimensional spaces.
