Category Archives: Uncategorized

Short Math Links

Posted on August 31, 2012 by woit

Some links of mathematical interest that I’ve recently run across: The life and work of Alexander Grothendieck is one of the great stories of modern mathematics. Winfried Scharlau’s first volume of a biography of Grothendieck, covering the years up to … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Simons Foundation and the arXiv

Posted on August 28, 2012 by woit

Via the Quantum Pontiff, news that the Simons Foundation will be providing up to \$300,000 in financial support to the arXiv for each of the next five year. Last year, the arXiv announced a \$60K planning grant from Simons. Now … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 22 Comments

SUSY 2012, and Strassler on the String Wars

Posted on August 15, 2012 by woit

This post was originally going to be just about the latest SUSY exclusion results announced at SUSY 2012 and their significance, but I realized there’s nothing much new to say, and it would be tedious to just write the same … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 38 Comments

’t Hooft on Cellular Automata and String Theory

Posted on August 13, 2012 by woit

Gerard ’t Hooft in recent years has been pursuing some idiosyncratic ideas about quantum mechanics; for various versions of these, see papers like this, this, this and this. His latest version is last month’s Discreteness and Determinism in Superstrings, which … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 30 Comments

Short Items

Posted on August 12, 2012 by woit

There’s an interview with the CERN director here. John Preskill and others at the Caltech Institute for Quantum Information and Mattter now have a blog here. The usual summer workshop on math and physics at Stony Brook is now running … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 26 Comments

Article for Il Manifesto

Posted on August 8, 2012 by woit

Around the time of the Higgs discovery announcement last month I was contacted by someone from the Italian left-wing newspaper Il Manifesto, who asked if I’d write something for them about the Higgs. I told them that it would be … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 29 Comments

Grigori Perelman, the Movie

Posted on August 5, 2012 by woit

I’ve checked the date on this, and it’s not April 1, so maybe this is actually true. According to the website of the Russian television news network RT, James Cameron to produce story of reclusive Russian genius: Celebrated Russian mathematician … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 24 Comments

Interview(s) with Vladimir Voevodsky

Posted on August 3, 2012 by woit

Vladimir Voevodsky is a mathematics professor at the IAS in Princeton, most famous for his proof of the Bloch-Kato conjecture, work which won him a Fields Medal in 2002. This conjecture relates the K-theory of fields and their étale cohomology … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Fundamental Physics Prize

Posted on July 31, 2012 by woit

String theory may not be doing so well in the popular press or among physicists, but at least a fabulously wealthy Russian investor is a fan. Yuri Milner recently deposited \$3 million each in the bank accounts of 5 string … Continue reading →

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Uncategorized | 149 Comments

Short Items

Posted on July 26, 2012 by woit

A few short items: To compare and contrast to the activities of the Simons Foundation, there’s the Templeton Foundation, which has a $1.7 billion or so endowment to spend: They have a new Big Questions Online site, which asks Does … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, Uncategorized | 12 Comments