Category Archives: Uncategorized

More Math and Physics Items

Posted on December 18, 2021 by woit

Yet more math items: First of all, congratulations to my colleague Johan de Jong, recipient of the 2022 AMS Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition. Johan’s Stacks Project is very much deserving of such recognition. It’s both huge in scale and … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments

Some Math and Physics Items

Posted on December 7, 2021 by woit

First some math news: An anonymous commenter claims here that the 2026 ICM will take place in Philadelphia. I had heard that a US group was submitting a proposal, so this rumor is plausible. Many mathematicians and physicists have signed … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 24 Comments

Lex Fridman Podcast

Posted on December 3, 2021 by woit

A couple months ago I recorded a podcast with Lex Fridman, it’s now available here. A lot of Fridman’s other interviews are well worth watching or listening to, and I thought we had an interesting conversation. I can’t stand listening … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 22 Comments

Unifying Foundations for Physics and Mathematics

Posted on November 28, 2021 by woit

During recent travels I attended two conferences (in Paris and Berkeley) and met up with quite a few people. At the Paris conference I gave an intentionally provocative talk to the philosophers of physics there, slides are here. The argument … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments

Back

Posted on November 26, 2021 by woit

I haven’t been posting here for a while, partly due to a lot of traveling, partly due to some personal time-consuming commitments, and largely due to a lack of much in the way of news that seemed worth much attention. … Continue reading →

Posted in abc Conjecture, Uncategorized | 11 Comments

News and Travels

Posted on October 15, 2021 by woit

First some personally relevant items: I finally have a finished version 2.0 of my euclidean twistor unification paper (discussed here), it’s uploaded to the arXiv, should appear there Monday. I’ll be giving a talk October 30th at the Foundations 2021 … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments

String Theory and the Real World

Posted on October 6, 2021 by woit

I just noticed that Gordon Kane has recently published a second edition of his 2017 String Theory and the Real World. Columbia doesn’t seem to yet have full online access to the second edition, but one can already compare the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments

Various Math and Physics News

Posted on October 4, 2021 by woit

First some items on the mathematics side: The latest AMS Notices has some memorial pieces about Vaughan Jones and Robert Hermann. I contributed a piece to the Hermann memorial, for more about him, see here. If you read French you … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments

Some Math Items

Posted on July 30, 2021 by woit

Some math items that may be of interest: Zentralblatt Math has a review of Mochizuki’s IUT papers, by Peter Scholze. Scholze explains the problem with the proof claimed in these papers. For more details, see his manuscript with Stix, or … Continue reading →

Posted in abc Conjecture, Uncategorized | 8 Comments

The Problem of Quantization

Posted on July 12, 2021 by woit

I’ve been watching Witten’s ongoing talks about geometric Langlands mentioned here, and wanted to recommend to everyone, mathematician or physicist, the first of them, on The Problem of Quantization (pdf here, video here, the question session is very worthwhile). For … Continue reading →

Posted in Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Theory: The Book, Uncategorized | 11 Comments