Sir Michael Atiyah and the Unity of Mathematics and Physics Credit: © Heidelberg Laureate Forum Foundation / Flemming – 2016 Sir Michael Atiyah is here at the 4th Heidelberg Laureate Forum both as a Fields Medalist (1966) and a winner of the Abel Prize (2004). … 23. Sep 2016 | By Peter Woit | 1 comment
Ratschläge für junge Mathematiker/-innen Bedeutend wird man in Mathematik (und Informatik) natürlich nicht, indem man einem bestimmten Rezept folgt. Und, ja, es ist immer wieder beeindruckend, wie oft Menschen Ratschläge bekommen und dann doch denjenigen Fehler machen, der … 23. Sep 2016 | By Markus Pössel | 0 comments
Advice to young mathematicians Becoming a great mathematician, or computer scientist, is not a matter of following career recipes. And yes, it is amazing how many people manage to listen to advice, and then go on to make the … 22. Sep 2016 | By Markus Pössel | 1 comment
The Langlands Program, Part II In a previous posting I explained a bit about the Langlands program, and the role of Fields medalist Ngô Bảo Châu in finishing the proof of a special case of the general functoriality conjecture. The … 22. Sep 2016 | By Peter Woit | 0 comments
Schöne, neue, intelligente Welt – wie künstliche Intelligenz uns allen helfen kann In intelligenten Robotern und Geräten mit künstlicher Intelligenz steckt unheimlich großes Potential, um das Leben der Menschen zum Positiven zu verändern. Und das beste ist: Das ist gar keine Zukunftsmusik. Es passiert jetzt gerade. Knapp … 22. Sep 2016 | By Tobias Maier | 3 comments
Fred Brooks on Virtual Environments On the second day of the Heidelberg Laureate Forum, Fred Brooks took the stage to talk virtual environments. We were lucky enough to interview him last year, when we focused mostly on software development. Because … 22. Sep 2016 | By Gail Carmichael | 0 comments
Collaboration (in Cartoons) Mathematics is lonely work. Or so the romantic stereotype has it: the lone genius in an empty library. The sage on the mountaintop. Andrew Wiles in the attic. But most mathematical work is profoundly collaborative. I … 22. Sep 2016 | By Ben Orlin | 0 comments
The Langlands Program, Part I The Langlands program is the name generally given to a highly influential vision unifying two different areas of mathematics, referring to a set of ideas first brought to light by Robert Langlands at the end … 22. Sep 2016 | By Peter Woit | 1 comment
Sometimes the Noise is Signals, Too Early in his talk, computer scientist John Hopcroft noted a funny fact about clustering algorithms: they work better on synthetic data than real data. But this is more than an odd tidbit about software. It’s … 21. Sep 2016 | By Ben Orlin | 4 comments
Teaching computers how to understand stories: 5 questions with Wolfgang Yarlott Wolfgang Victor Yarlott, a Young Researcher at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum, studies narrative through the lens of computer science. He completed his undergraduate studies at MIT and recently began a PhD program at Florida International … 21. Sep 2016 | By Daniel Gross | 0 comments
