Posts Categorized: books

My favourite tags on MathOverflow are big-lists, big-picture, soft-question, reference-request and the like. Often, answers to such tagged questions contain sound reading advice, style: “road-map to important result/theory X”. Two more K to go, so let’s spend some more money. [section_title text=”Category theory”] [full_width_image] [/full_width_image] One of the problems with my master course on algebraic… Read more »

Santa gave me 3000 Euros to spend on books. One downside: I have to give him my wish-list before monday. So, I’d better get started. Clearly, any further suggestions you might have will be much appreciated, either in the comments below or more directly via email. Today I’ll focus on my own interests: algebraic geometry,… Read more »

It was fun following the second game last night in real time. Carlsen got a winning endgame with two bishops against a rook, but blundered with 62. Bg4?? (winning was Kf7), resulting in stalemate. There was this hilarious message around move 60: “The computer has just announced that white mates in 31 moves. Of course,… Read more »

In 2001, Eugenia Cheng gave an interesting after-dinner talk Mathematics and Lego: the untold story. In it she compared math research to fooling around with lego. A quote: “Lego: the universal toy. Enjoyed by people of all ages all over the place. The idea is simple and brilliant. Start with some basic blocks that can… Read more »

If you’re a mathematician chances are that your text-editor of choice will be TeXShop, the perfect environment for writing papers. Even when writing a massive textbook, most of us stick to this or a similar LaTeX-frontend. The order of chapters in such a book is usually self-evident, and it is enough to use one TeX-file… Read more »

Two more days to go in the NaNoWriMo 2016 challenge. Alas, it was clear from the outset that I would fail, bad. I didn’t have a sound battle plan. Hell, I didn’t even have a a clue which book to write… But then, I may treat myself to a SloWriMo over the Christmas break. For… Read more »

Some weeks ago I did register to be a participant of NaNoWriMo 2016. It’s a belated new-year’s resolution. When PS (pseudonymous sister), always eager to fill a 10 second silence at family dinners, asked (PS) And Lieven, what are your resolutions for 2016? she didn’t really expect an answer (for decades my generic reply has… Read more »

Many identify the ‘Tohoku Mathematical Journal’ with just one paper published in it, affectionately called the Tohoku paper: “Sur quelques points d’algèbre homologique” by Alexander Grothendieck. In this paper, Grothendieck reshaped homological algebra for Abelian categories, extending the setting of Cartan-Eilenberg (their book and the paper both appeared in 1957). While working on the Tohoku… Read more »

A reading suggestion for Grothendieck-stalkers crawling around the Ariège region, near Saint-Girons, in search of ‘another house’ : better bring along the Fogas Chronicles by Julia Stagg.

Over the week-end I read The artist and the mathematician (subtitle : The story of Nicolas Bourbaki, the genius mathematician who never existed) by Amir D. Aczel. Whereas the central character of the book should be Bourbaki, it focusses more on two of Bourbaki’s most colorful members, André Weil and Alexander Grothendieck, and the many… Read more »

Some French real estate agents don’t try to sell you property, but a dream. There’s nothing wrong with pursuing dreams as long as you’re doing the necessary maths. If not, your dream may soon become an horrible nightmare… Just finished reading A Chateau Of One’s Own (subtitle : “Restoration misadventures in France”) by Sam Juneau…. Read more »