Monthly Archives: February 2017

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

A Big Bang in a Little Room

Posted on February 18, 2017 by woit

There’s a review in today’s Wall Street Journal by me of Zeeya Merali’s A Big Bang in a Little Room. If their version is behind a paywall you might find also find it elsewhere (for instance here). I’ll reproduce parts … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews, Fake Physics | 21 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