Sunday, January 26, 2014

JMM and MoMath


Brian Hayes of "bit-player" offers a wonderful account of his experience at the recent Joint Math Meetings in Baltimore:

http://bit-player.org/2014/notes-from-the-jmm

… really, a must-read; especially interesting stuff on Yitang Zhang, of twin-prime fame (and apparently now tackling the Goldbach conjecture), including this quote from one of his former Purdue colleagues T.T. Moh:
"When I looked into his [Zhang's] eyes, I found a disturbing soul, a burning bush, an explorer who wanted to reach the north pole, a mountaineer who determined to scale Mt. Everest, and a traveler who would brave thunders and lightnings to reach his destination."

Meanwhile, Peter Woit reports on a "cagematch" between Ed Frenkel (Platonist) and Jim Holt (non-Platonist) held at the Museum of Mathematics in New York recently; he calls it "a no-holds-barred discussion of Platonism and mathematics in front of a standing-room-only crowd"... sounds like it was quite entertaining:

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=6609

Don't know if MoMath will eventually upload the session to their YouTube channel, but if you wish to watch for it, or explore some of their other events, the channel is here:

http://www.youtube.com/museumofmathematics



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