Category Archives: Uncategorized

The latest New Scientist has an article about Erik Verlinde’s “entropic gravity”, with enthusiastic remarks from Robbert Dijkgraaf and Stanley Deser. Gerard ‘t Hooft expresses pleasure at seeing a string theorist talking about “real physical concepts like mass and force, … Continue reading →

A little while ago I did an interview for Big Think, and they just put it up here today, with some editorial comment here. I really don’t like watching or listening to myself, so I’m not about to go through … Continue reading →

Particle theory is about to have a significantly higher profile in midtown Manhattan, with the launch of two new programs this spring: The CUNY Graduate Center at 34th St. is starting up an Initiative for the Theoretical Sciences, with a … Continue reading →

The Simons Foundation isn’t the only one announcing funding opportunities in math and physics. The Templeton Foundation’s list of funding priorities for 2010 is here, with applications opening February 1. In math and physics the topics they want to support … Continue reading →

An Iranian theoretical physicist named Masoud Alimohammadi was assassinated in Teheran Tuesday. Alimohammadi’s publication list indicates that he began his career specializing in conformal field theory, and more recently had been working on questions in general relativity. Initial news reports … Continue reading →

The latest AMS notices has the news that the Simons Foundation is now spending about $40 million/year in mathematics and related theoretical fields. This is being done under a program being run by David Eisenbud at Berkeley, and the first … Continue reading →

I hadn’t heard much about Dinesh D’Souza since the Reagan era when for some mysterious reason his views were widely promoted in the media. He has continued since then to play the role (supposedly according to the New York Times … Continue reading →

The proof of the fundamental lemma by Ngo has made it onto Time magazine’s list of the top ten scientific discoveries of 2009. Ngo will be visiting Columbia in the near future, and I might even end up understanding what … Continue reading →

One effect of Nature’s embargo policy is to encourage the spread of wild rumors. It’s almost part of the mission statement of this blog to participate in this, so I feel I must link to this. Update: Nature unequivocally denies … Continue reading →

Over the past two days, CERN has been hosting a program consisting mostly of talks by Nobel prize winners in high energy physics, under the title 50 Years of Nobel Memories in High Energy Physics. It has been a while … Continue reading →