[PLUG-TALK] Wikipedia and John Ball lecture

Jeme A Brelin jeme at brelin.net
Sun May 18 00:26:15 UTC 2008


On Fri, 16 May 2008, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> World-renowned British mathematician Sir John Ball gave an invited 
> lecture at PSU on Thursday night about the controversy surrounding 
> Perelman's proof of the Poincaré conjecture, and Perelman's subsequent 
> refusal to accept the Fields medal for it.

Was this the Masseeh lecture?  A couple of years ago, Dr. Ronald Graham 
came and I feel like his visit has done more than any other single event 
to shape me as a mathematician.

I wish I'd seen Sir John.  Ah, well, there are always more lectures.

> Wikipedia fans will be pleased to note that Dr. Ball mentioned Wikipedia 
> as the best place to learn about the conjecture and the controversy. 
> Too bad Jimmy Wales is too old to get the Fields medal!

I kind of hope the Abel prize will replace the Fields medal as the highest 
honor.  First, it's named for a properly historic mathematician (who, in 
appropriate fashion, lived a tragic, short, and largely penniless 
existence) and second, it is given every year and has no age restriction 
(a terrible, long-standing prejudice in the mathematics community that is 
only now starting to be questioned and dismissed -- In the interest of 
full disclosure, I should note that I am the oldest person ever to be 
admitted in my institution's doctoral mathematics program).

> BTW, Dr. Ball had the usual problems with PowerPoint.  Afterwards, I 
> gave him a Ubuntu Hardy CD, and asked him to appoint an Expendable 
> Graduate Student to try it out.

Good news.

Hey, some folks came to me to ask about doing their slides in LaTeX and I 
didn't have instant answers.  What do y'all use?

J.


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