Posts In Category general
Olivier Messiaen & Mathieu 12
on December 31, 2009 by lieven in Bourbaki, general, groups, Comments (5)
To mark the end of 2009 and 6 years of blogging, two musical compositions with a mathematical touch to them. I wish you all a better 2010!
Remember from last time that we identified Olivier Messiaen as the ‘Monsieur Modulo’ playing the musical organ at the Bourbaki wedding. This was based on the fact that his [...]
Where is the Royal Poldavian Academy?
on October 11, 2009 by lieven in Bourbaki, general, Comments (0)
Among the items found on Andre Weil at the time of his arrest was “a packet of calling cards belonging to Nicolas Bourbaki, member of the Royal Academy of Poldavia”.
But then, where is the Royal Poldavian Academy situated? Well, surely in the Kingdom of Poldavia, which is a very strange kingdom indeed, its currency unit [...]
When was the Bourbaki wedding?
on October 7, 2009 by lieven in Bourbaki, books, general, Comments (6)
It’s great fun trying to decode some of the puns contained in Betti Bourbaki’s wedding invitation. Below a photograph, taken on May 13th 1939, of three of the practical jokers (from left to right : Ralph Boas, Frank Smithies and Andre Weil), the others were Claude Chabauty, Weil’s wife Eveline and Louis Bouckaert (from Louvain).
Part [...]
The wedding invitation that nearly killed Andre Weil
on October 6, 2009 by lieven in Bourbaki, general, Comments (1)
Andre Weil wrote about his arrest as a Russian spy in november 1939 :
“The manuscripts they found appeared suspicious – like those of Sophus Lie, arrested on charges of spying in Paris, in 1870. They also found several rolls of stenotypewritten paper at the bottom of a closet. When I said these were the text of a Balzac novel, [...]
maths for aspiring chatelains
on October 3, 2009 by lieven in books, general, Comments (3)
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. [...]
Grothendieck’s survival talks
on August 6, 2009 by lieven in general, lazy blogging, Comments (2)
The Grothendieck circle is a great resource to find published as well as unpublished texts by Alexander Grothendieck.
One of the text I was unaware of is his Introduction to Functorial Algebraic Geometry, a set of notes written up by Federico Gaeta based on tape-recordings (!) of an 100-hour course given by Grothendieck in Buffalo, NY [...]
Gina says (continued)
on August 5, 2009 by lieven in general, lazy blogging, Comments (1)
Via the Arcadian functor I’ve grabbed the full text of Gil Kalai’s book Gina Says: Adventures in the Blogsphere String War (part 1 and part 2) and read it on a lazy sunny afternoon.
Arguably the best paragraph is the final one, and, it might be sensible to start the book by reading it first [...]
introducing : the n-geometry cafe
on July 17, 2009 by lieven in general, geometry, iMath, Comments (3)
It all started with this comment on the noncommutative geometry blog by “gabriel” :
Even though my understanding of noncommutative geometry is limited, there are some aspects that I am able to follow. I was wondering, since there are so few blogs here, why don’t you guys forge an alliance with neverending books, you blog about [...]
Bourbakism & the queen bee syndrome
on July 15, 2009 by lieven in general, rants, Comments (0)
Probably the smartest move I’ve made after entering math-school was to fall in love with a feminist.
Yeah well, perhaps I’ll expand a bit on this sentence another time. For now, suffice it to say that I did pick up a few words in the process, among them : the queen bee syndrome :
women who have [...]
Now here’s an idea
on June 23, 2009 by lieven in general, lazy blogging, Comments (3)
Boy, do I feel stupid for having written close to 500 blog-posts hoping (in vain) they might eventually converge into a book project…
Gil Kalai is infinitely smarter. Get a fake gmail account, invent a fictitious character and start COMMENTING and provoking responses. That’s how “Gina” appeared on the scene, cut and pasted her comments (and [...]
Hi, I'm a professor of mathematics at the University of Antwerp, in Belgium. My research areas are non-commutative algebra and non-commutative geometry. Sometimes, you can also find me here :
