Category Archives: Uncategorized

I usually try hard to avoid writing here about anything not directly related to mathematics and physics, but on rare occasions I can’t resist. Many readers may want to skip this posting as unserious, but maybe some will find it … Continue reading →

The winner of this year’s Abel prize, a prize of over $1 million set up back in 2001 to provide an equivalent of a Nobel prize in mathematics, is… Actually, I have no idea. If you know who it is, … Continue reading →

Today’s second most viewed article in Newsweek is an interview with Steven Weinberg about what we’ll learn at the LHC. Unfortunately it almost immediately turns into a discussion about religion and is linked to on the Newsweek site as Will … Continue reading →

Tomorrow I’ll be in Las Vegas, on my way to southern Utah, so will miss a couple of math-physics media events taking place in Paris. At 2pm on Sunday, Lubos Motl will be appearing at the France Television booth at … Continue reading →

The past few weeks I’ve often been going down to the IAS in Princeton on Thursdays to hear talks given as part of the special program there this semester in mathematics. These talks included a series of five talks by … Continue reading →

The 2008 Templeton Prize was announced today. It goes to Michael Heller, a Polish cosmologist, philosopher and Catholic priest, for “sharply focused and strikingly original concepts on the origin and cause of the universe.” The full name of the Templeton … Continue reading →

The String Vacuum Project, described as “a large, multi-institution, interdisciplinary collaboration”, that has been established over the last few years, is having its Kick-Off Meeting next month at the University of Arizona. This group had submitted grant proposals to the … Continue reading →

Larry Fleinhardt, the fictional Caltech string theorist in the TV show Numb3rs, has decided to give up on string theory for now and become a phenomenologist. According to the show’s co-writer Nick Falacci: Like real-life physicists, Fleinhardt hit a roadblock … Continue reading →

Today here in New York City there will be a formal announcement by governor Eliot Spitzer of a gift by Jim Simons of $60 million dollars to fund a new research center at SUNY Stony Brook, to be called the … Continue reading →

Last spring there was a conference held in Florence which brought together many of those who worked on dual models and string theory during the late sixties and early seventies. Slides from the talks are here, and many of the … Continue reading →