Category Archives: Uncategorized

Two Pet Peeves

Posted on April 20, 2017 by woit

I was reminded of two of my pet peeves while taking a look at the appendix A of this paper. As a public service to physicists I thought I’d go on about them here, and provide some advice to the … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Uncategorized | 28 Comments

Quick Links

Posted on April 16, 2017 by woit

A few quick items: I was very sorry to hear recently of the death of David Goss (obituary here), a mathematician specialist in function fields who was at Ohio State. David had a side interest in physics and was a … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 22 Comments

The Social Bubble of Physics

Posted on April 7, 2017 by woit

Sabine Hossenfelder is on a tear this week, with two excellent and highly provocative pieces about research practice in theoretical physics, a topic on which she has become the field’s most perceptive critic. The first is in this month’s Nature … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 71 Comments

Some Math and Physics Interactions

Posted on April 5, 2017 by woit

Quanta magazine has a new article about physicists “attacking” the Riemann Hypothesis, based on the publication in PRL of this paper. The only comment from a mathematician evaluating relevance of this to a proof of the Riemann Hypothesis basically says … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 21 Comments

Reality is Not What It Seems

Posted on March 4, 2017 by woit

This Sunday’s New York Times has a rather hostile review by Lisa Randall of Carlo Rovelli’s popular book Reality is Not What It Seems, which has recently come out in English in the US. Rovelli responds with a Facebook post. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments

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

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