The announcement of the Shaw Prize was posted on 23rd May, reading: The Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences 2017 is awarded in equal shares to János Kollár and Claire Voisin for their remarkable results in many central areas of algebraic geometry, which have transformed the field and led to the solution of long-standing problems that had appeared out of reach.…
13532385396179 doesn’t climb to a prime
Someone called James Davis has found a counterexample to John H. Conway’s “Climb to a Prime” conjecture, for which Conway was offering \$1,000 for a solution. The conjecture goes like this, as stated in Conway’s list of \$1,000 problems: Let $n$ be a positive integer. Write the prime factorization in the usual way, e.g. $60…
Carnival of Mathematics 146
The next issue of the Carnival of Mathematics, rounding up blog posts from the month of May, and compiled by Peter, is now online at his blog. The Carnival rounds up maths blog posts from all over the internet, including some from our own Aperiodical. See our Carnival of Mathematics page for more information.
Everyone’s A Mathematician – Astronauts
We all know mathematicians are the coolest people on the planet. But it turns out that of all the people not on the planet, all of them are in fact either mathematicians, or have mathematical backgrounds or training. Astronauts – and Russian cosmonauts – are all super mathsy people, and if they weren’t already awesome…
Right answer for the wrong reason: cellular automaton on the new Cambridge North station
Cambridge North is a brand new train station, and the building’s got a fab bit of cladding with a design ‘derived from John Horton Conway’s “Game of Life” theories which he established while at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 1970.’ One problem: that’s Wolfram’s Rule 135, not the Game of Life. You can tell because…
We want your best #proofinatoot on mathstodon.xyz
Mastodon is a new social network, heavily inspired by Twitter but with a few differences: tweets are called toots, it’s populated by tusksome mammals instead of little birds, and it’s designed to run in a decentralised manner – anyone can set up their own ‘instance’ and connect to everyone else using the GNU Social protocol. Colin…
Alexandre Grothendieck’s notes archive to be released online
News from France, where the family of the late Alexandre Grothendieck, legend of basically all maths, have finally reached an agreement with the academic community about his huge archive of written notes. Discussions have been ongoing for a while but it’s finally been agreed that the notes can be released online for the community at…