Category Archives: Uncategorized

To update the situation at Columbia, first of all, the weather is sunny and nice and the campus is very quiet. As has been the case since the police were brought in to clear Hamilton Hall and the encampments nearly … Continue reading →

A few math and physics items: Masaki Kashiwara is the winner of the 2025 Abel Prize, see an announcement here, a New York Times article here and a Nature article here. Kashiwara has worked an a wide range of topics … Continue reading →

When I left for spring break 10 days ago, I was intending to write something continuing along the lines of my last blog post. The idea was to try and fight the campaign of lies about the university and support … Continue reading →

The Trump administration has announced a cutoff of $400 million in funding to Columbia University, supposedly because of its failure to take action against anti-semitism on the campus. Two months ago one would have assumed that the idea that the … Continue reading →

The prospect of massive cuts in US federal government science funding has caused an increase in the usual heated internet debates over science funding. These typically involve people arguing either: “Funding for science research is an unalloyed good that leads … Continue reading →

Back in 2022 at the time of the rescheduled 2022 ICM I wrote here: One decision already made there was that the 2026 ICM will be hosted by the US in Philadelphia. With the 2022 experience in mind, hopefully the … Continue reading →

A few items of various kinds: A little while ago I did another podcast, this time with Hrvoje Kukina. The result is now available here. There’s a new French documentary out, available here, about the story of the campaign by … Continue reading →

Jesper Grimstrup and Jarl Sidelmann have an interesting new paper up on the arXiv, entitled Competition and survival in modern academia: A bibliometric case study of theoretical high-energy physics. It uses bibliometric data to study career paths in hep-th, especially … Continue reading →

I just noticed something new showing up in Google searches, summaries of the state of scientific research areas such as this one about String Theory And Quantum Gravity. They’re produced by Nature Research Intelligence, which has been around for a … Continue reading →

I recently realized that this would be the 2000th posting on this blog and was hoping to have something interesting to post for the occasion. Things though have been very quiet and I’m about to go off on vacation, so … Continue reading →