Monthly Archives: September 2004

Some History

Posted on September 30, 2004 by woit

There’s an interesting new preprint by the historian of mathematics Erhard Scholz about the early history of the use of representation theory in quantum mechanics. Immediately after the beginnings of quantum mechanics in 1925, several people started to realize that … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

2004 Nobel Prizes in Physics

Posted on September 29, 2004 by woit

No, they haven’t announced the Nobel prizes yet this year. The announcement of the physics prize is scheduled for mid-day (Stockholm time) next Tuesday. I have zero inside information about who is likely to get the prize this year, but … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Uncategorized | 29 Comments

What the Bleep Do We Know?

Posted on September 27, 2004 by woit

Last night I went to see a movie which was advertised as being about quantum physics, called “What the Bleep Do We Know?”. I was expecting something pretty dumb, but am always interested to see what people think about quantum … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Film Reviews | 21 Comments

This Week’s Predictions

Posted on September 20, 2004 by woit

A new preprint by Michael Douglas indicates that, at least this week, the latest “predictions” from string theory are for: 1. No large extra dimensions. 2. No low scale supersymmetry. So it looks like the “prediction” of the string theory … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 18 Comments

String Geometry at Snowbird

Posted on September 19, 2004 by woit

Thomas Larsson wrote in a comment mentioning a news story that appeared early this past summer in the Deseret Morning News (yes, that’s Deseret, not Desert; this is a name Mormons use to refer to Utah). The news story is … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments

Motl on String Field Theory

Posted on September 17, 2004 by woit

Lubos Motl has an interesting post on sci.physics.stringsthat gives a detailed explanation of the current state of string field theory. One way of motivating quantum field theory is to start with a “first-quantized” quantum theory of particles (perhaps defined by … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

CERN at 50

Posted on September 16, 2004 by woit

This month is the 50th anniversary of the formal founding of the CERN laboratory near Geneva. There’s a very interesting article in Physics World about CERN and its future plans. LHC construction seems to be proceeding more or less on … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Grothendieck Biographical Article

Posted on September 14, 2004 by woit

The latest issue of the Notices of the AMS contains the first part of a long biographical article about Grothendieck written by Allyn Jackson. Evidently Winfried Scharlau is writing a biography of Grothendieck, and Jackson’s article is partially based on … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments

Perelman and the Poincare Conjecture

Posted on September 8, 2004 by woit

One of the great stories of mathematics in recent years has been the proof of the Poincare conjecture by Grisha Perelman. This has been one of the most famous open problems in mathematics and has been around for about one … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

Self-congratulatory Meta-post

Posted on September 1, 2004 by woit

When I first started this weblog I thought very few people would be interested in reading it. I’ve been very pleasantly surprised both by the general high quality of the comments people contribute and by the ever increasing number of … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 22 Comments