Very few professional mathematicians have been involved in the “math wars”, and when they have, they have not always inspired confidence. I wondered why.
Not human, but inhabited by humans: writing mathematics
Mathematics can be written in many ways. One approach, very popular with professional pure mathematicians, is to write as little as possible. But there should also be others.
“I liked doing what I wasn’t supposed to do”: the life and mathematics of Karen Uhlenbeck
In September 2019 I gave a talk about the life and some of the mathematics of Karen Uhlenbeck, the great mathematician and first woman to win an Abel Prize. This was a Monash LunchMaths seminar.
Breakthroughs in primary school arithmetic
Humans have known how to multiply natural numbers for a long time. In primary school you learn how to multiply numbers using an algorithm which is often called long multiplication, but it’s called “long” for a reason! Recently, a new paper purports to give an algorithm to multiply faster.
From Liouville geometry to contact geometry
(Technical) We’re going to take Liouville structures and move them into 3 dimensions, to obtain contact structures.
Lovely Liouville geometry
(Technical) I’d like to show you some very nice geometry, involving some vector fields and differential forms.
Emmy had a theorem (mathematical nursery rhyme #2)
In the spirit of previous work in abstract algebra, I have, erm, adapted another nursery rhyme. To the tune of “Mary had a little lamb”, a discussion of Noether’s theorem.
Golay Golay Golay (Top of the autocorrelation world)
In 1949, Marcel Golay was thinking about spectrometry. Here’s what happened next…
Topological entropy: information in the limit of perfect eyesight
Entropy means many different things in different contexts, but there is a wonderful notion of entropy which is purely topological. It only requires a space, and a map on it. It is independent of geometry, or any other arbitrary features — it is a purely intrinsic concept. This notion is known as topological entropy.
Abstract algebra nursery rhyme
In the spirit of hilariously advanced baby books like Chris Ferrie’s Quantum Physics for Babies, I have taken to incorporating absurdly sophisticated concepts into nursery rhymes.