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2010 Fields Medal Awarded
- nickpinkston 16y agoDid anyone read what these people did? It's amazing this is still English! Check out one: Elon Lindenstrauss is being awarded the 2010 Fields Medal for his results on measure rigidity in ergodic theory, and their applications to number theory. Fields Medal - Elon Lindenstrauss, Princeton University Lindenstrauss has made far-reaching advances in ergodic theory, the study of measure preserving transformations. His work on a conjecture of Furstenberg and Margulis concerning the measure rigidity of higher rank diagonal actions in homogeneous spaces has led to striking applications. Specifically, jointly with Einsiedler and Katok, he established the conjecture under a further hypothesis of positive entropy. It has impressive applications to the classical Littlewood Conjecture in the theory of diophantine approximation. Developing these as well other powerful ergodic theoretic and arithmetical ideas, Lindenstrauss resolved the arithmetic quantum unique ergodicity conjecture of Rudnick and Sarnak in the theory of modular forms. He and his collaborators have found many other unexpected applications of these ergodic theoretic techniques in problems in classical number theory. His work is exceptionally deep and its impact goes far beyond ergodic theory.
- CamperBob 16y agoIt sounds like the editors of Social Text are still butthurt over the Sokal paper and are back for revenge.
- jballanc 16y agoErgodic theory is a theory that comes from Statistical Mechanics. Imagine you have a handful of atoms and a box, now let's say that you line the atoms up along one side of the box and give them all a push perfectly perpendicular to the side (oh, and the sides are perfectly flat). What happens? The atoms keep just bouncing back and forth between those two sides, and large regions of the box never have any atoms in them. If this situation could happen in real life, then Statistical Mechanics would have serious problems! So Ergodic Theory is basically the study of making sure that the atoms in a box bounce all over equally...
- cma 16y agoCovered a bit in Cybernetics: http://books.google.com/books?id=NnM-uISyywAC&lpg=PP1&dq=cybernetics&pg=PA49#v=onepage&q=ergodic&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=NnM-uISyywAC&lpg=PP1...
- TheEzEzz 16y agoI'm about to graduate with my PhD in math and I don't have any idea what that research summary means.
- nopinsight 16y agoDoes that mean the landscape of human math knowledge is so large that one specialist does not usually have a chance to visit other areas apart from one's own?
- jdale27 16y agoOh, hell yes.
- TheEzEzz 16y agoYes. When I was a kid I wanted to get a PhD in math and physics and comp sci and etc etc etc. I was really disappointed when I got older and realized I would only have time for one. So I chose math because I wanted to study mathematical logic, differential equations, numerics and etc etc etc. Then I got to grad school and realized I would only have time for one. So I chose numerics because I wanted to study molecular dynamics, computational neuroscience, fluid dynamics, etc etc. Then I had to choose an advisor, and I realized I'd only get in an education in one sub discipline. So I chose fluid mechanics, because I wanted to study polymeric fluids, multiscale dynamics, fluid-structure interactions, etc etc. Then I finally started doing real research and realized I'd be lucky just to make a noticeable contribution to one of those. There are exceptions, of course. (I don't mean to sound pessimistic, just realistic. Research has been good to me, and I love doing it)
- edanm 16y agoHow often are you exposed, even minimally, to other disciplines inside mathematics? For example, I'm no researcher, but I tend to try and read a few good books about maths, and sometimes even actual mathematical books, just for the fun. Do you tend to do the same?
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- archgoon 16y agoThe work summaries are actually quite good. I've only an undergraduate degree in math and physics, and I can at least get some idea of what the accomplishments are. Julie Rehmeyer is to be commended.
- kvs 16y agoRead Harry Kesten's laudation of Stas Smirnov, you can skip over the "details" and it's still a fun read: http://www.icm2010.in/wp-content/icmfiles/laudaions/fields3.pdf http://www.icm2010.in/wp-content/icmfiles/laudaions/fields3....
- ethanhuynh 16y agoI'm from Vietnam, and Ngo Bao Chau made us proud
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Evgeny 16y agoHonest question to the HN audience: Do you think that being proud of someone just because he's your compatriot is rational or irrational? After all, you just share the same nationality by random chance, therefore isn't it the same as being proud that you were born on the same day of the week as Einstein or that your hair is the same colour as George Washington's?
- mwerty 16y agoIt is hard not to derive pride from your identity, whatever you think it to be.
- yurylifshits 16y agoIs it rational to feel happiness? If someone feels proud, he/she naturally just got a good moment in life. I guess your question was: Is it rational to identify yourself with an external entity in order to feel good/bad when something happens to this entity. The answer is: In many cases it is perfectly rational. E.g. when people start supporting an old soccer sclub that got a breakout success, old supporters refer to new ones as "gloryhunters". By the way, I am a gloryhunter here as well. One of the four Fields medalists this year (Stas Smirnov) graduated from the same high school and college as I did.
- kenjackson 16y agoIt's unclear if its rational to be "proud",but I do think it might be rational to be happy about it. To the extent that people make snap judgments about other people based on race or nationality, it would seem that you'd want people that share your ethnicity or nationality to do well. This likely has a minor increase in people's perception of you. Likewise, you probably feel shame or unhappiness when the opposite happens. Just look at what being Muslim is like in the US now.
- mian2zi3 16y agoTao has a nice post describing some of the accomplishments of the Fields medal winners here: http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/lindenstrauss-ngo-smirnov-villani/ http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/lindenstrauss-ngo-s...