{"id":9591,"date":"2017-10-01T14:58:14","date_gmt":"2017-10-01T18:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=9591"},"modified":"2017-10-11T22:53:42","modified_gmt":"2017-10-12T02:53:42","slug":"vladimir-voevodsky-1966-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=9591","title":{"rendered":"Vladimir Voevodsky 1966-2017"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was very sorry to hear yesterday of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ias.edu\/news\/2017\/vladimir-voevodsky\">announcement from the IAS<\/a> of the untimely death of Vladimir Voevodsky, at the age of 51.  Last year I had the chance to meet Voevodsky and talk with him for a while at the Heidelberg Leader&#8217;s Forum (which I wrote about <a href=\"https:\/\/scilogs.spektrum.de\/hlf\/voevodsky-proof-assistants\/\">here<\/a>).  He was a gracious and modest person, and it was fascinating to learn a bit about what he was trying to do, and his earlier experiences doing mathematics that had led him down this path.  There was no indication at that time that he was ill, and I don&#8217;t know what led to his death.<\/p>\n<p>Back in 2012 I wrote a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=4975\">blog post about him and his work<\/a>, linking to various things that may be of interest if you&#8217;d like to know more about him.  Among more recent sources of information, there&#8217;s a video interview <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/99586217\">here<\/a>, a popular article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ias.edu\/ideas\/2014\/voevodsky-origins\">here<\/a>, lecture slides <a href=\"http:\/\/www.math.ias.edu\/vladimir\/sites\/math.ias.edu.vladimir\/files\/2014_IAS.pdf\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.ias.edu\/vladimir\/sites\/math.ias.edu.vladimir\/files\/2014_08_ASC_lecture.pdf\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.ias.edu\/vladimir\/sites\/math.ias.edu.vladimir\/files\/2015_06_30_RDP.pdf\">here<\/a>, and a <a href=\"http:\/\/nautil.us\/issue\/24\/error\/in-mathematics-mistakes-arent-what-they-used-to-be\">piece by Siobhan Roberts<\/a>  which covers some of the same topics that Voevodsky told me about when I met him last year.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>: See <a href=\"https:\/\/groups.google.com\/forum\/#!topic\/homotopytypetheory\/K_4bAZEDRvE\">here<\/a> for remembrances of Voevodsky on the HoTT mailing list.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>: There will be a gathering at the IAS to remember Voevodsky this Sunday, a funeral service and conference in Moscow December 27-28, and a conference in Princeton September 29-30, 2018.  More information available <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ias.edu\/events\/gathering-remembrance-vladimir-voevodsky\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>: A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ias.edu\/news\/2017\/vladimir-voevodsky-obituary\">longer obituary of Voevodsky<\/a>, from the IAS.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>: The New York Times has an obituary <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/10\/06\/obituaries\/vladimir-voevodsky-revolutionary-mathematician-dies-at-51.html\">here<\/a>.  Video of the IAS gathering is available <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ias.edu\/ideas\/2017\/remembering-vladimir-voevodsky\">here<\/a>.  Especially informative and touching is the talk given there by his ex-wife Nadia Shalaby, who gave a detailed look at his life, mathematical and personal, including a frank discussion of his problems with mental illness, depression and sometimes self-destructive ways of dealing with this.  Also see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.quantamagazine.org\/visionary-mathematician-vladimir-voevodsky-dies-at-51-20171011\/\">this story at Quanta<\/a>, where Shalaby gives the cause of his death as an aneurysm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was very sorry to hear yesterday of the announcement from the IAS of the untimely death of Vladimir Voevodsky, at the age of 51. Last year I had the chance to meet Voevodsky and talk with him for a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=9591\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-obituaries"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9591"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9645,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9591\/revisions\/9645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}