[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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