Wednesday, August 23, 2006

2006 Fields medals

Perelman seems to be bringing a lot of attention to mathematics. From
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/
(which has discussions on the work of winners and various links):
Today the arXiv servers contain the message ” arXiv.org servers are currently under very heavy load due to demand for Grisha Perelman’s papers, published only as arXiv.org e-prints, which are available below.”
The information about various winners and their work can be found at;
http://www.icm2006.org/press/releases/
The work of Nevanlinna prize winner Jon Kleinberg seems to be of general interest and accessible to most:
http://www.icm2006.org/dailynews/nevannlina_kleinberg_info_en.pdf
The youngest this year is Terence Tao at 31 and he describes his methods in:
http://www.college.ucla.edu/news/05/terencetaomath.html
Though all this news seems to be rekindling a bit of interest in mathematics again, nothing brought me the same thrill as Galois Theory of which:
Hermann Weyl, one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, said of this testament ( composed on the night before his death}, "This letter, if judged by the novelty and profundity of ideas it contains, is perhaps the most substantial piece of writing in the whole literature of mankind."

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