July 30, 2004
More on the The Millennium Problems
The London Review of Books has a review of Keith Devlin's book on the
Clay Math Millennium problems, `The Millennium Problems: The Seven Greatest Unsolved Mathematical Puzzles of Our Time.'
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n14/moor02_.html
The review is by A W Moore, a fellow in Philosophy at Oxford.
In the same article, is a sympathetic portrait of Louis de Branges, who
currently claims the solution to the Invariant Subspace Problem, and the
Invariant Subspace Problem.
The portrait by Karl Sabbagh, also paints the Mathematical community as
somewhat cruel hearted about de Branges' claims. He does mention that
de Branges' version of the proofs has changed several times over the last
ten years. But does not mention the time that a range of very serious mathematicians have spend trying to verify earlier versions of the proofs.
I was at Indiana University when the earliest versions of the proofs came out.
Ciprian Foias and Hari Bercovici were part of a multi week seminar during
which de Branges saught to explain the proof. Later, a concrete error was found. This story has been repeated several times, which Mr Sabbagh does not mention.
July 22, 2004
US Math Olympiad Team Finishes Second, behind China
From the AMS website. The 2004 U.S. Math Olympiad team finished second among over 80 countries at
the recently concluded 45th International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) in
Athens, Greece. U.S. team members were: Oleg Goldberg, Tianka Liu, Alison
Miller, Aaron Pixton and Tony Zhang, who each won a gold medal, and Matt
Ince, who won a silver medal. The medal count and second-place finish are
the best results for a U.S. team since 1994. China finished first with a
team total of 220 points (out of 252 possible), eight points ahead of the
U.S. team. Rounding out the top five teams were Russia, Vietnam, and
Bulgaria. Cancun, Mexico is the site of next year's Olympiad. Information
about IMO 2004 is posted at
http://www.imo2004.gr
Nat Chafee has Retired
Professor Nate Chafee, being toasted in this picture from last May, has retired. During his retirement, he will be enjoying his family home in Maine, Fall trips to Europe, and working on a history of the School of Mathematics.
July 20, 2004
Math in Moscow Scholarships
The Math in Moscow program provides undergraduates with
an outstanding cultural and educational semester at Moscow State University.
In addition, the $5000 schloarships can make this semster quite affordable.
Deadline for application to the Spring Semester is Sept 30. For Fall Semester,
April 15.
One GT major, Elizabeth Sanders, has participated in the Math in Moscow
program. See her description here.
The other study abroad in math, in Budapest has had a number of participants: David Eger,
Casey Warmbrand, as well as David Eger (again) and Adam Marcus, as Fulbrights.
July 18, 2004
Zixia Song, PhD
Zixia Song has successfully defended her PhD dissertation,
"Extremal Functions for Contractions of Graphs."
She will take a postdoctoral position at Ohio State beginning in the Fall.
Congratulations, Zixia.
July 17, 2004
Is Mathematics a Sport?
Jordan Ellenberg has a fun piece at Slate on just this question. After all, chess was a exhibition sport
at the Sydney Olympics.
Jordan Ellenberg has an established reputation as a mathematician. (You can serach the name at MathSciNet.) And guides the graduate program at Princeton
University. He writes well on the topic of Mathematics.