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Huawei and French mathematics

Published January 4, 2022 by lievenlb

Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant, appears to support (and divide) the French mathematical community.

I was surprised to see that Laurent Lafforgue’s affiliation recently changed from ‘IHES’ to ‘Huawei’, for example here as one of the organisers of the Lake Como conference on ‘Unifying themes in geometry’.

Judging from this short Huawei-clip (in French) he thoroughly enjoys his new position.

Huawei claims that ‘Three more winners of the highest mathematics award have now joined Huawei’:

– Maxim Kontsevich, (IHES) Fields medal 1998

– Pierre-Louis Lions (College de France) Fields medal 1994

– Alessio Figalli (ETH) Fields medal 2018

These news-stories seem to have been G-translated from the Chinese, resulting in misspellings and perhaps other inaccuracies. Maxim’s research field is described as ‘kink theory’ (LoL).

Apart from luring away Fields medallist, Huawei set up last year the brand new Huawei Lagrange Research Center in the posh 7th arrondissement de Paris. (This ‘Lagrange Center’ is different from the Lagrange Institute in Paris devoted to astronomy and physics.)



It aims to host about 30 researchers in mathematics and computer science, giving them the opportunity to live in the ‘unique eco-system of Paris, having the largest group of mathematicians in the world, as well as the best universities’.

Last May, Michel Broué authored an open letter to the French mathematical community Dans un hotel particulier du 7eme arrondissement de Paris (in French). A G-translation of the final part of this open letter:

“In the context of a very insufficient research and development effort in France, and bleak prospects for our young researchers, it is tempting to welcome the creation of the Lagrange center. We welcome the rise of Chinese mathematics to the highest level, and we are obviously in favour of scientific cooperation with our Chinese colleagues.

But in view of the role played by Huawei in the repression in Xinjiang and potentially everywhere in China, we call on mathematicians and computer scientists already engaged to withdraw from this project. We ask all researchers not to participate in the activities of this center, as we ourselves are committed to doing.”

Among the mathematicians signing the letter are Pierre Cartier and Pierre Schapira.

To be continued.

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Lockdown reading : SNORT

Published May 2, 2021 by lievenlb

In this series I’ll mention some books I found entertaining, stimulating or comforting during these Corona times. Read them at your own risk.



This must have been the third time I’ve read The genius in by basement – The biography of a happy man by Alexander masters.

I first read it when it came out in 2011.

Then, in conjunction with Genius at play – The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway Conway’s biography by Siobhan Roberts, in july 2017, which is probably the best way to read this book.

And, then again last week, as Simon Norton‘s work pops up wherever I look, as in the previous post.

It takes some time to get used to the rather chaotic style (probably used because that’s how Masters perceives Norton), and all attempts at explaining Simon’s mathematics can better be skipped.

The book tries to find an answer as to why a child prodigy and genius like Simon Norton failed to secure a safe place in academics.

Page 328:

Simon’s second explanation of his loss of mathematical direction is heartbreaking. Now that Conway has fled to America, there is no one in the mathematical world who will work with him.

They say he is too peculiar, too shabby, too old.

His interests are fixed in mathematics that has had its day. His brilliance is frigid. His talent, perfectly suited to an extraordinary moment in algebraic history (the symmetry work at Cambridge during the early 1970s and 1980s) is out of fashion.

This may give the impression that Norton stopped doing good math after Conway left for Princeton in 1985. This is far from true.

Norton’s Wikipedia page mentions only post 1995 publications, which in itself is deplorable, as it leaves out his contributions to the ATLAS and his seminal paper with Conway on Monstrous moonshine.

Here’s Alexander Masters talking about ‘Genius in my basement’

I’ll leave you with a nice quote, comparing Monstrous Moonshine to a Sainsbury’s bag on Jupiter.

Page 334:

This much I do know: Monstrous Moonshine links the Monster to distant mathematics and the structure of space in ways that are as awe-inspiring to a man like Simon as it would be to an astronaut to step out of his space machine on Jupiter, and find a Sainsbury’s bag floating past. That’s why it’s called ‘Moonshine’, because mathematicians can even now hardly believe it.

‘I think’, said Simon, standing up from his berth and shaking crumbs and clotted blobs of oil and fish off his T-shirt onto the covers, ‘I can explain to you what Moonshine is in one sentence.’

When he really tries, Simon can be a model of clarity.

‘It is,’ he said, ‘the voice of God.’

Ps, wrt. SNORT.

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Escher’s stairs

Published April 28, 2021 by lievenlb

Stairways feature prominently in several drawings by Maurits Cornelis (“Mauk”) Escher, for example in this lithograph print Relativity from 1953.



Relativity (M. C. Escher) – Photo Credit

From its Wikipedia page:

In the world of ‘Relativity’, there are three sources of gravity, each being orthogonal to the two others.
Each inhabitant lives in one of the gravity wells, where normal physical laws apply.
There are sixteen characters, spread between each gravity source, six in one and five each in the other two.
The apparent confusion of the lithograph print comes from the fact that the three gravity sources are depicted in the same space.
The structure has seven stairways, and each stairway can be used by people who belong to two different gravity sources.

Escher’s inspiration for “Relativity” (h/t Gerard Westendorp on Twitter) were his recollections of the staircases in his old secondary school in Arnhem, the Lorentz HBS.
The name comes from the Dutch physicist and Nobel prize winner Hendrik Antoon Lorentz who attended from 1866 to 1869, the “Hogere Burger School” in Arnhem, then at a different location (Willemsplein).



Stairways Lorentz HBS in Arnhem – Photo Credit

Between 1912 and 1918 Mauk Escher attended the Arnhem HBS, located in the Schoolstraat and build in 1904-05 by the architect Gerrit Versteeg. The school building is constructed around a monumental central stairway.



Arnhem HBS – G. Versteeg 1904-05 – Photo Credit



Plan HBS-Arnhem by G. Versteeg – Photo Credit

If you flip the picture below in the vertical direction, the two side-stairways become accessible to figures living in an opposite gravitation field.



Central staircase HBS Arnhem – Photo Credit

There’s an excellent post on the Arnhem-years of Mauk Escher by Pieter van der Kuil. Unfortunately (for most of you) in Dutch, but perhaps Google translate can do its magic here.

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