Category Archives: Uncategorized

Various and Sundry

Posted on September 17, 2014 by woit

The MacArthur Foundation today announced “Genius” grants of $625,000 to 21 people, including two mathematicians, Jacob Lurie and Yitang Zhang. While there was a time these awards often went to mathematicians and theoretical physicists (the 1987 winners included string theorists … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

SUSY Bets

Posted on September 3, 2014 by woit

The LHC long shutdown (LS1) seems to be progressing on schedule, with physics collisions at 13 TeV planned for early April 2015. I’d guess the earliest 13 TeV results might appear at the summer 2015 conferences. The long term plan … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

Quick Links

Posted on August 25, 2014 by woit

Now back from the West Coast, here’s a list of things I’ve run across that may be of interest: One piece of news from Berkeley is that Peter Scholze will be there this fall, giving a course describing new techniques … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments

Grand Unification of Mathematics and Physics

Posted on August 20, 2014 by woit

For a second slogan about quantum mechanics I’ve chosen: Quantum mechanics is evidence of a grand unification of mathematics and physics. I’m not sure whether this slogan is likely to annoy physicists or mathematicians more, but in any case Edward … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Quantum Mechanics, Uncategorized | 7 Comments

2014 Fields Medals

Posted on August 12, 2014 by woit

I thought this wasn’t supposed to be announced until late this evening New York time, but the Fields Medal announcement is now online. The winners are: Artur Avila Manjul Bhargava Martin Hairer Maryam Mirzakhani Mirzakhani is the first woman to … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 53 Comments

The NSA, NIST and the AMS

Posted on July 21, 2014 by woit

Among the many disturbing aspects of the behavior of the NSA revealed by the Snowden documents, the most controversial one directly relevant to mathematicians was the story of the NSA’s involvement in a flawed NIST cryptography standard (for more see … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 23 Comments

String Theory and Post-Empiricism

Posted on July 10, 2014 by woit

Note: This is being published simultaneously here and at Scientia Salon. Discussion will be at the Scientia Salon site. Last month’s Strings 2014 conference in Princeton included two remarkable talks by prominent physicists, both of whom invoked philosophy in a … Continue reading →

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Quick Links

Posted on July 8, 2014 by woit

Jim Simons is profiled in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, the New York Times today. The WSJ piece is partly about a recent $50 million donation to the Simons Center for Quantitative Biology at Cold Spring Harbor, but it reports … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

2015 Breakthrough Prizes in Mathematics

Posted on June 23, 2014 by woit

The first set of winners of the $3 million Milner/Zuckerberg financed Breakthrough Prizes in mathematics was announced today: it’s Donaldson, Kontsevich, Lurie, Tao and Taylor. There’s a good New York Times story here. When these prizes were first announced last … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 24 Comments

Smoking Gun No Longer Smoking

Posted on June 19, 2014 by woit

The BICEP2 paper is now out in Physical Review Letters, with major revisions to its conclusions from the preprint/press conference version of last March. For another sort of associated revision, compare this (from a March 17 Stanford press release): Linde, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 47 Comments