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Author Archives: Gil Kalai
To cheer you up in difficult times 21: Giles Gardam lecture and new result on Kaplansky’s conjectures
There is a very famous conjecture of Irving Kaplansky that asserts that the group ring of a torsion free group does not have zero-divisors. Given a group G and a ring R, the group ring R[G] consists of formal (finite) … Continue reading
Nostalgia corner: John Riordan’s referee report of my first paper
In 1971/1972 academic year, I was an undergraduate student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and toward the end of the year I wrote a paper about Abel’s sums. I sent it to John Riordan the author of the books … Continue reading
Posted in Combinatorics, personal
Tagged Abel sums, John Riordan, Niels Henrik Abel, refereeing
7 Comments
At the Movies III: Picture a Scientist
A few days ago I saw the great, emotionally steering, movie Picture a Scientist. I strongly recommend it. Here is the link to the hompage trailer, and IMBd page. SYNOPSIS PICTURE A SCIENTIST chronicles the groundswell of researchers who are … Continue reading
Posted in Movies, Women in science
Tagged Jane Willenbring, Nancy Hopkins, picture a scientist, Raychelle Burks, Women in science
2 Comments
At the Movies II: Kobi Mizrahi’s short movie White Eye makes it to the Oscar’s short list.
My nephew Kobi Mizrahi is a well known movie producer and it was just announced that his short film “White eye” (עין לבנה) made it to the short list of ten Oscar candidates in the live-action short category. The director … Continue reading
And the Oscar goes to: Meir Feder, Zvi Reznic, Guy Dorman, and Ron Yogev
My mother Carmela Kalai often said that if there was something she is thankful for it was that she was born in the era of movies. Indeed, she loved movies from a very early age throughout her life. So, I … Continue reading
Posted in Computer Science and Optimization, Information theory, Movies
Tagged Guy Dorman, Meir Feder, Ron Yogev, Zvi Reznic
1 Comment
Thomas Vidick: What it is that we do
Originally posted on MyCQstate:
This post is a follow-up on some somewhat off-hand comments that I made earlier regarding the notion of truth in a “proof-based” discipline such as pure mathematics or theoretical computer science. Since the former is easier…
To cheer you up in difficult times 20: Ben Green presents super-polynomial lower bounds for off-diagonal van der Waerden numbers W(3,k)
What will be the next polymath project? click here for our post about it. New lower bounds for van der Waerden numbers by Ben Green Abstract: We show that there is a red-blue colouring of [N] with no blue 3-term … Continue reading
To cheer you up in difficult times 19: Nati Linial and Adi Shraibman construct larger corner-free sets from better numbers-on-the-forehead protocols
What will be the next polymath project? click here for our previous post. Number on the forehead, communication complexity, and additive combinatorics Larger Corner-Free Sets from Better NOF Exactly-N Protocols, by Nati Linial and Adi Shraibman Abstract: A subset of … Continue reading
Posted in Combinatorics, Computer Science and Optimization
Tagged Adi Shraibman, Nati Linial
3 Comments
Possible future Polymath projects (2009, 2021)
What will be our next polymath project? A polymath project (Wikipedia) is a collaboration among mathematicians to solve important and difficult mathematical problems by coordinating many mathematicians to communicate with each other on finding the best route to the solution. … Continue reading
Posted in Combinatorics, Mathematics over the Internet, Open discussion
Tagged polymath, Polymath proposals, Tim Gowers
22 Comments
Peter Cameron: Doing research
Originally posted on Peter Cameron's Blog:
Probably every research mathematician has been asked the question, “How do you do mathematical research?” Some lay people think we simply figure out ways of doing bigger and bigger long multiplications. Many more…
