Math Drudge

The 2010 meeting of the International Mathematical Union is being held in Hyderabad, India. At this meeting, Ingrid Daubechies (of wavelet fame) was appointed President, the first woman ever afforded than honor. Also at this meeting the Fields Medal, long regarded as the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize, was awarded to four mathematicians:

Elon . . . → Read More: Fields Medals awarded

In honor of Jonathan Borwein’s 60th birthday in May 2011, a workshop on “Computational and Analytical Mathematics” will be held at the IRMACS Center of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC, Canada.

Here is a synopsis of the upcoming meeting, taken from
SFU conference announcement:

Having authored more than a dozen books and more than 300 publications, Jonathan Borwein . . . → Read More: Workshop to honor Jonathan Borwein’s 60th birthday

On 6 August 2010, Vinay Deolalikar, a mathematician working at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alo, California, distributed a note to some colleagues claiming that he had solved the “P not NP” problem, a most famous and potentially far-reaching question at the nexus of mathematics and computer science. Deolalikar’s manuscript is available here: Deolalikar paper.

The Clay . . . → Read More: Has the “P not NP” problem been solved?

Prof. Jonathan Borwein of the University of Newcastle, Australia, will give the “public lecture” at the upcoming meeting of the Australian Mathematical Society on “The life of Pi.” Here are some details: Announcement

Abstract: The desire to understand pi, the challenge, and originally the need, to calculate ever more accurate values of pi, the ratio . . . → Read More: Borwein to present lecture on “The life of Pi”

Online article

Details of methods used

Synopsis:

A pair of Japanese and US computer whizzes claim to have calculated pi to five trillion decimal places — a number which if verified eclipses the previous record set by a French software engineer.

“We believe our achievement sets a new record,” Japanese system engineer Shigeru Kondo said, adding that the Frenchman’s . . . → Read More: Japanese and U.S. researchers compute pi to 5 trillion places

Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman announced today that he is rejecting the $1 million Clay Mathematics Institute prize for his recent solution of the Poincare conjecture. Perelman has been quoted saying he believes his contribution in proving the conjecture was no greater than that of a U.S. mathematician named Richard Hamilton, who first suggested an approach . . . → Read More: Perelman rejects $1 million Clay award

David H. Bailey will present three talks in Spain in June 2010:

“High-Precision Computation: Mathematical Physics and Dynamics,” Joint
SIAM/RSME-SCM-SEMA Meeting on Emerging Topics in Dynamical Systems and Partial Differential Equations, University of Catalona, Barcelona, Spain (June 2010) PDF

“Computing as the Third Mode of Scientific and Mathematical Discovery,” Barcelona Supercomputer Center (3 Jun 2010): PDF
“High-Precision, Highly Parallel . . . → Read More: Bailey to give three talks in Spain

A workshop on the Sage mathematical software system will be presented at the upcoming MAA MathFest in Pittsburgh, PA (5-7 Aug 2010):

“Hands-On Explorations in Algebra and Combinatorics”

Neal Calkin, Clemson University
Dan Warner, Clemson University

Part 1: Tuesday, August 3, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Reception: 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
Part 2: Wednesday, August 4, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm

In . . . → Read More: Short course on Sage at Pittsburg MathFest

Next week David H. Bailey of LBNL is giving the keynote speech at the “SHARCNet Research Day,” a meeting of researchers affiliated with Canada’s leading high-performance computing network. This will be held 6 May 2010 at York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The talk is entitled “Computing as the Third Mode of Scientific and . . . → Read More: Bailey to give keynote speech at SHARCNet Research Day

Our colleague Steven Strogatz has written a series of articles on mathematics, targeted to a “lay” reader, for the “Opinionator” series of the New York Times. Stogratz’s latest article reconstructs Archimedes’ discovery of how pi can be seen to be a limit of areas of inscribed and circumscribed polygons: Strogatz article on limits.

Strogatz’s other articles . . . → Read More: Steven Strogatz’s NY Times articles on math