Category Archives: Uncategorized

There’s a wonderful interview at the Notices with last year’s Abel Prize winner John Tate (video here). He blames the fact that his name is on so many mathematical results and concepts on Serge Lang. The 2011 Abel Prize winner … Continue reading →

Almost five months into FY 2011, the US still has no budget for the year, operating on a continuing resolution that funds the government at FY 2010 levels until March 4. The House Republicans have come up with a proposal … Continue reading →

A selection of celebrity math/physics news: Jane Fonda’s blog has a report on My Meeting With Stephen Hawking. Hawking told her “You were my heart throb”, admitting that Barbarella was what he had in mind. MIT has put online a … Continue reading →

This may be old news, but I just recently noticed that talks given at the IAS in Princeton last fall to celebrate its 80th anniversary are now available on-line here. They include talks by Voevodsky on the foundations of mathematics, … Continue reading →

According to the WordPress software, this is either post 999 or 1000 on this blog, depending on whether you count one I haven’t gotten around to finishing. I’m not sure that number is reliable anyway, since there are various anomalies … Continue reading →

The Templeton Foundation has just released their “2010 Capabilities Report“, a sort of bi-annual report. It shows that in 2009 they had assets of $1.5 billion, and spent $31.8 million on “Science and the Big Questions”. For 2010 two of … Continue reading →

There’s an excellent article by Michel Berube about the Sokal hoax, fifteen years later, entitled The Science Wars Redux. The latest Notices of the AMS has a review of the recent Yau-Nadis book by Nigel Hitchin (for my take, see … Continue reading →

This week the Simons Center is hosting a workshop on Differential Cohomology and its applications in physics. I won’t try and give an explanation of what differential cohomology is here, with a little luck the videos of the talks will … Continue reading →

There’s an explanation at the latest Abstruse Goose. To recycle some of my own writing, from page 107 of NEW, the book: When I was a graduate student at Princeton, one day I was leaving the library perhaps thirty feet … Continue reading →