Author Archives: woit

Bertram Kostant 1928-2017

Posted on February 25, 2017 by woit

I was sorry to just hear via a comment here about the recent death of Bert Kostant, at the age of 88. MIT has a story about him here. Kostant was a major figure in the field of representation theory, … Continue reading →

Posted in Obituaries, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Various News

Posted on February 22, 2017 by woit

First some mathematics items: Igor Shafarevich, one of the great figures of twentieth century algebraic geometry and algebraic number theory, died this past weekend at the age of 93. Besides his many contributions to mathematics research, he was also a … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, Uncategorized | 15 Comments

A Big Bang in a Little Room

Posted on February 18, 2017 by woit

There’s a review in today’s Wall Street Journal by me of Zeeya Merali’s A Big Bang in a Little Room. If their version is behind a paywall you might find also find it elsewhere (for instance here). I’ll reproduce parts … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews, Fake Physics | 21 Comments

Various Links

Posted on February 10, 2017 by woit

The Columbia Math department has been doing extremely well in recent years, with some wonderful mathematicians joining the department. A couple items first involving some of them: Kevin Hartnett at Quanta Magazine has a great article about developments in the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 23 Comments

Perfectoid Woodstock

Posted on February 7, 2017 by woit

Every year in Tucson the Arizona Winter School takes place, with a five day program on some topic in arithmetic geometry aimed mainly at advanced graduate students, designed to get them involved in current research-level topics. This year’s topic (Perfectoid … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 22 Comments

Math and Physics Social Media

Posted on February 4, 2017 by woit

In the current situation, getting back to finding interesting news about math and/or physics to think about seems like a good idea, but I’ve been having trouble coming up with such news. Besides blogs, many of them listed on the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

Fascism and the Current National Emergency

Posted on January 28, 2017 by woit

After the election it seemed to me that it would be a good idea to ignore what Trump tweeted or said, and wait to see what he and the people he surrounded himself with would actually do. We’ve been finding … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 52 Comments

Fake Physics

Posted on January 20, 2017 by woit

2016 so far wins my lifetime award for most depressing and disturbing year ever (on the front of the larger world one reads about in the newspaper and elsewhere, personally things are fine, thanks). Perhaps the most disturbing thing has … Continue reading →

Posted in Fake Physics, Favorite Old Posts, Multiverse Mania | 61 Comments

Various and Sundry

Posted on January 13, 2017 by woit

A few links for your weekend reading: If you just can’t get enough of the Multiverse, Inference has commentary on Max Tegmark from Daniel Kleitman and Sheldon Glashow. Coverage of the important topic of blackboards is to be found here. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 59 Comments

New Year’s Multiverse

Posted on January 7, 2017 by woit

I see little to be hopeful about the new year, but had a glimmer of a hope that we’ll see a reduction in Multiverse Mania. Surely people will sooner or later get tired of stale pseudo-science. Just got back to … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 73 Comments