Monthly Archives: October 2004

Georgi on “Women and the Future of Physics”

Posted on October 28, 2004 by woit

Howard Georgi gave a colloquium at Fermilab last week, and the slides and video from his talk are now online. He has gathered quite a lot of interesting data about women in the various sciences at the undergraduate and graduate … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 43 Comments

Symmetry Magazine

Posted on October 27, 2004 by woit

SLAC and Fermilab have joined forces and replaced their “FermiNews” and “Beam Line” publications with a new one called “Symmetry”. I like the title; it’s nice to see that the major US particle physics labs are supporting a publication about … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments

Chern-Simons-Witten, Some History

Posted on October 26, 2004 by woit

Lubos Motl is promoting a revisionist history of topological quantum field theory according to which it was all inspired by string theory. Unlike him, I was working on the subject at the time it was developed, and remember the history … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Uncategorized | 24 Comments

On Beauty and String Theory

Posted on October 25, 2004 by woit

One of the arguments often given for string theory is that it is somehow exceptionally “beautiful”. This has always mystified me, since that’s certainly not the way I would describe it. Over the years I’ve paid close attention whenever I … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 39 Comments

Witten Colloquium

Posted on October 21, 2004 by woit

I was down in Princeton today and went to hear Witten’s physics department colloquium on the topic of “Supersymmetry: Pro or Con”. He spent most of the hour going over the 25 year-old hierarchy argument for supersymmetry (that supersymmetry provides … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 27 Comments

Grothendieck and Motives

Posted on October 19, 2004 by woit

The latest issue of the Notices of the AMS contains several things very much worth reading. There’s the second part of a wonderful biographical article about Grothendieck written by Allyn Jackson (for some comments about the first part, see an … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Interview with Atiyah and Singer

Posted on October 17, 2004 by woit

There’s a fascinating interview with Atiyah and Singer now on-line. It was conducted in May at the time they were awarded the Abel prize. The interview and Atiyah and Singer’s acceptance speeches are also available in video form. The whole … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 14 Comments

Sean Carroll on the Landscape

Posted on October 15, 2004 by woit

Over at Preposterous Universe Sean Carroll has some comments on the anthropic principle and the landscape. He describes one extreme of the spectrum of opinion about this as people who think the whole thing is completely non-scientific, giving what he … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 25 Comments

Hidenaga Yamagishi

Posted on October 13, 2004 by woit

A special issue of Physics Reports has appeared entitled “Hidenaga Yamagishi’s World”. Unfortunately it’s only available online if you are paying Elsevier, so I won’t post a link (it’s volume 398, issue 4-6). This issue is a memorial to the … Continue reading →

Posted in Obituaries | 3 Comments

Witten replaces WMAP

Posted on October 11, 2004 by woit

Witten is giving a colloquium talk next week at Princeton on the topic of “Supersymmetry Pro or Con”. His talk is a last-minute replacement for one about “Recent Results from WMAP” by Lyman Page. WMAP was supposed to report the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments