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HLF Blogs – The numbers behind the young researchers

By Paul Taylor and Katie Steckles. Posted September 30, 2017

This week, Katie and Paul are blogging from the Heidelberg Laureate Forum – a week-long maths conference where current young researchers in maths and computer science can meet and hear talks by top-level prize-winning researchers. For more information about the HLF, visit the Heidelberg Laureate Forum website.

The view on the boat deck – plenty of young researchers to corner!

Having extensively covered the talks and press conferences of the Laureates so far, we thought it was time to talk to some of the Young Researchers at this year’s HLF about the work they’re doing.

HLF Blogs – Fractals for dinner

By Katie Steckles. Posted September 29, 2017

The HLF, like all good conference events, has involved a large number of extravagant dinners, serving a variety of delicious food and drink to sustain the high levels of serious mathematical and research conversation. At last night’s Bavarian evening, I noticed a particularly mathematically interesting foodstuff was on the menu, and it’s inspired me enough to write about it.

HLF Blogs – Leslie Lamport thinks your proofs are bad

By Paul Taylor. Posted September 29, 2017

Bad news: The Turing award winner and father of LaTeX thinks the proofs you (and everyone else) are writing are sloppy, non-rigorous and quite likely flat-out wrong. But there’s good news too: Sir Michael Atiyah is not quite so sure.

HLF Blogs – A Mathematical Easter Egg

By Katie Steckles. Posted September 28, 2017

To make all the HLF attendees’ lives easier this week, the organisers have put together a marvelous app which includes the programme for the event, information about the conference, a full delegate list with a built-in messaging system, and a few other bells and whistles. There’s also an intriguing mystery, which has been eating away at me since I installed the app at the start of the conference.

HLF Blogs – Math ⇔ Art: the Gosper curve

By Paul Taylor. Posted September 28, 2017

Running alongside the 5th HLF is an exhibition of mathematical art by the astrophysicist Aldo Spizzichino. He’s taken ideas from mathematics, and used his own set of programs (in Fortran, no less) to produce his images, a couple of dozen of which are on display in the Old University building a few steps from the forum. Although all the pieces were generating discussion as I looked round the exhibition on Sunday morning, I’ve picked two to talk a bit about, both based on the same piece of maths.

HLF Blogs – Approximate Gaussian Elimination

By Katie Steckles. Posted September 27, 2017

One of the more technical lectures at the HLF so far was given by Daniel Spielman, on the Approximate Gaussian Elimination algorithm his research group has produced, and how it differs from traditional Gaussian Elimination. So what is Gaussian Elimination?

HLF Blogs – Vint Cerf’s press conference: in quotes

By Paul Taylor. Posted September 27, 2017

Vint Cerf, who along with Robert E Kahn won the ACM Turing Award in 2004 for his work on the TCP/IP protocols underpinning the Internet, is one of the Laureates at this year’s HLF. On Friday he’ll be giving a lecture on an ‘Interplanetary Internet’, the protocols needed to deal with the unique challenges posed by telecommunications in space. But on Monday afternoon he chatted to a small group of journalists and bloggers on a wide variety of topics. With apologies for anything I’ve mangled, here’s a short selection of quotes from the man himself.