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HLF Blogs: Why you’re already an algebraic geometer

By Katie Steckles. Posted September 29, 2018

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 HLF included a talk from 2018 Fields medalist Caucher Birkar. His subject area, algebraic geometry, is one of the largest fields of research within pure mathematics (over a quarter of the 60 Fields medals awarded since 1936 have been to people working in algebraic geometry), and it has connections to many other fields of maths including topology, algebra and number theory. But what exactly is algebraic geometry? Well, if you’ve studied maths at school, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve already done some.

HLF Blogs: Leslie Lamport Thinks Your Code Is Bad

By Paul Taylor. Posted September 27, 2018

Image: Heidelberg Laureate Forum Foundation / © Bernhard Kreutzer

At last year’s HLF, Turing Award Leslie Lamport gave us his (not wholly complimentary) thoughts on the state of proof-writing in mathematics. Since he has worked in both maths and computer science, members of the latter discipline may have felt they got off quite lightly. Perhaps to redress the balance, this year we found out what he thinks is wrong with most people’s code and algorithms, in a talk titled If You’re Not Writing a Program, Don’t Use a Programming Language.

HLF Blogs: What is the Riemann Hypothesis?

By Katie Steckles and Paul Taylor. Posted September 23, 2018

This year at the HLF there are multiple sessions in the program concerning the Riemann Hypothesis, including a talk from one of the laureates, and one of the young-researcher-led workshop sessions. But what exactly is the Riemann Hypothesis, and what is its place in mathematics?

Polyhedra Viewer – meet Nat Alison

By Katie Steckles. Posted September 13, 2018

We spoke to Nat Alison (@tesseralis), creator of the amazing Polyhedra Viewer.

A chat with the creator of Number Drop

By Katie Steckles. Posted June 20, 2018

Number Drop is a mobile app maths game we came across recently, and have taken the opportunity to have a chat with its creator, Ben. NumberDrop is available for on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

Carnival of Mathematics 158

By Paul Taylor. Posted June 10, 2018

This is the 158th Carnival of Mathematics, a monthly round-up of interesting maths bits from across the internet. Convention dictates that I now therefore specify some interesting facts about the number 158. Unfortunately I am writing this on a train with no internet access, which will make fulfilling this obligation more than usually challenging.

I’ve written some stuff for the HLF Spektrum blog

By Katie Steckles. Posted May 8, 2018

Since blogging for the Heidelberg Laureate Forum last September, I’ve now started writing regular posts for their all-year-round blog, which is hosted at Spektrum SciLogs.

My first two posts are:

Keep an eye on the Spektrum blog, and the Aperiodical Twitter feed for news of further posts!