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Posted on August 25, 2014 by woit

Now back from the West Coast, here’s a list of things I’ve run across that may be of interest: One piece of news from Berkeley is that Peter Scholze will be there this fall, giving a course describing new techniques … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments

Grand Unification of Mathematics and Physics

Posted on August 20, 2014 by woit

For a second slogan about quantum mechanics I’ve chosen: Quantum mechanics is evidence of a grand unification of mathematics and physics. I’m not sure whether this slogan is likely to annoy physicists or mathematicians more, but in any case Edward … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Quantum Mechanics, Uncategorized | 7 Comments

2014 Fields Medals

Posted on August 12, 2014 by woit

I thought this wasn’t supposed to be announced until late this evening New York time, but the Fields Medal announcement is now online. The winners are: Artur Avila Manjul Bhargava Martin Hairer Maryam Mirzakhani Mirzakhani is the first woman to … Continue reading →

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The NSA, NIST and the AMS

Posted on July 21, 2014 by woit

Among the many disturbing aspects of the behavior of the NSA revealed by the Snowden documents, the most controversial one directly relevant to mathematicians was the story of the NSA’s involvement in a flawed NIST cryptography standard (for more see … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 23 Comments

String Theory and Post-Empiricism

Posted on July 10, 2014 by woit

Note: This is being published simultaneously here and at Scientia Salon. Discussion will be at the Scientia Salon site. Last month’s Strings 2014 conference in Princeton included two remarkable talks by prominent physicists, both of whom invoked philosophy in a … Continue reading →

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Posted on July 8, 2014 by woit

Jim Simons is profiled in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, the New York Times today. The WSJ piece is partly about a recent $50 million donation to the Simons Center for Quantitative Biology at Cold Spring Harbor, but it reports … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

2015 Breakthrough Prizes in Mathematics

Posted on June 23, 2014 by woit

The first set of winners of the $3 million Milner/Zuckerberg financed Breakthrough Prizes in mathematics was announced today: it’s Donaldson, Kontsevich, Lurie, Tao and Taylor. There’s a good New York Times story here. When these prizes were first announced last … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 24 Comments

Smoking Gun No Longer Smoking

Posted on June 19, 2014 by woit

The BICEP2 paper is now out in Physical Review Letters, with major revisions to its conclusions from the preprint/press conference version of last March. For another sort of associated revision, compare this (from a March 17 Stanford press release): Linde, … Continue reading →

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Large Hadron Collider Physics Conference

Posted on June 9, 2014 by woit

While I was away last week Columbia was hosting the Large Hadron Collider Physics (LHCP) conference here on campus. Talks are available here. Matt Strassler posts about some of the new Higgs results, which basically see some of the inconsistencies … Continue reading →

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Evidence in the Natural Sciences

Posted on June 9, 2014 by woit

I recently spent a day at the Simons Foundation in midtown, attending a symposium on Evidence in the Natural Sciences. Of the scientific program talks, I got the most out of the one by Thomas Hales on the question of … Continue reading →

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