Category Archives: Uncategorized

A few things that may be of interest: Survey articles prepared for the 2018 ICM proceedings are starting to appear on the arXiv, and Peter Scholze (who will be getting a Fields Medal in Rio) has put his on his … Continue reading →

Back in 2004, the KITP put out a press release (which I wrote about in an early blog post here) announcing that “Newly Devised Test May Confirm Strings as Fundamental Constituent of Matter, Energy”. The press release announced that Polchinski … Continue reading →

I made the mistake yesterday evening of spending it out in Red Hook, at an event billed as addressing the scientific controversy over string theory. The venue was an arts space called Pioneer Works, the brain-child of artist Dustin Yellin … Continue reading →

There’s a very intriguing new article out today by Kevin Hartnett at Quanta magazine, entitled Secret Link Uncovered Between Pure Math and Physics (also a video here). It’s about ideas relating number theory and physics from arithmetic geometer Minhyong Kim. … Continue reading →

Quanta magazine has an interesting new piece up, an interview of Witten by Natalie Wolchover. One topic covered in the interview is the question discussed in a recent posting, that of whether a different formulation of QFT exists, one not … Continue reading →

First, two local events, involving well-known physics bloggers: Last Thursday I had the pleasure of attending an event at NYU featuring Sabine Hossenfelder and Natalie Wolchover in conversation. You can watch this for yourself here. If you’re not following Hossenfelder … Continue reading →

The Breakthrough Prizes for 2018 will be awarded at a ceremony on December 3, I believe at the usual NASA Hangar 1 in Mountain View. The next day Stanford will host the 2018 Breakthrough Prize symposium, which one will be … Continue reading →

A few links that may be of interest. Mathematics first: A seminar “Lectures Grothendieckiennes” on the mathematical ideas of Alexander Grothendieck is taking place this year in Paris, and has just recently started up. My ex-Columbia colleague Jeff Achter is … Continue reading →

Since returning from a vacation partly spent isolated from the internet, I’ve been catching up and noticed that some of the most prominent sources of funding for math and physics research have been making the news: The New York Times … Continue reading →

A few short items: My graduate school roommate Nathan Myhrvold has a new book coming out this month, a five-volume series about the science of bread, based on several years of research into the subject at his laboratory near Seattle. … Continue reading →