Author Archives: woit

Milner-Zuckerberg Prizes for Mathematics

Posted on December 13, 2013 by woit

At the Hollywood-style awards ceremony last night for $3 million string theory and biomedical research prizes, it was announced that Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg will now start funding something similar in mathematics, called the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics. According … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 65 Comments

2014 Milner Prizes

Posted on December 11, 2013 by woit

Last March an Oscar-style ceremony hosted by Morgan Freeman was held in Geneva (see here) to award the 2013 \$3 million Milner Prize to Princeton string theorist Alexander Polyakov. Tomorrow an even more lavish ceremony designed to turn “Oscars of … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 20 Comments

Latest on Amplitudes

Posted on December 10, 2013 by woit

This week the Simons Center is hosting a workshop on “The Geometry and Physics of Scattering Amplitudes”, talks are available here. Last week they (and the YITP) held a one-day symposium on Trees, loops and precision QCD, based around the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments

What’s Next?

Posted on December 9, 2013 by woit

Last week’s public lecture at the Institute for Advanced Study by Nati Seiberg is now available online. He was speaking with the title What’s Next? and promoting a story about where particle physics is and where it is going pretty … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 56 Comments

Peter Higgs: “Today I wouldn’t get an academic job. It’s as simple as that”

Posted on December 7, 2013 by woit

The Guardian has an interesting piece about Peter Higgs, evidently their reporter talked to him on his way to the Nobel Prize ceremonies this week in Stockholm. Higgs will be speaking tomorrow (Sunday), and I’m curious to hear what he … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

News from CERN

Posted on December 5, 2013 by woit

Here’s a roundup of recent CERN-related news: The status of the LHC and the LHC experiments was discussed here yesterday. The LHC shutdown is more or less on track, first beams at 13 TeV total energy Jan. 2015, physics starting … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 5 Comments

Quantum Mechanics and Representation Theory: talk and book progress

Posted on November 27, 2013 by woit

Last week I gave a colloquium talk at the Texas Tech math department, slides are here if you’re interested. One motivation for the talk was to advertise the book project I’m working on, which gives a lot more detail about … Continue reading →

Posted in Quantum Theory: The Book | 29 Comments

Controversy over Yau-Tian-Donaldson

Posted on November 25, 2013 by woit

The last posting here was about an unusually collaborative effort among mathematicians, whereas this one is about the opposite, an unusually contentious situation surrounding important recent mathematical progress. What’s at issue is the proof of what has become known as … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments

Progress on Twin Primes

Posted on November 20, 2013 by woit

There’s a new paper out on the arXiv last night, Small gaps between primes, by James Maynard, which brings the bound on the size of gaps between primes down to 600. This uses some new methods, beating out the Polymath8 … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Anderson 90th

Posted on November 17, 2013 by woit

Philip Anderson’s 90th birthday is coming up next month, and Princeton will host a workshop commemorating the event. Witten and Wilczek will give talks on the Anderson-Higgs mechanism, for which Anderson recently was not awarded a Nobel Prize (for the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 34 Comments