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Robert Langlands: The Greatest Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of?

thewalrus.ca

61–70 of 78 posts

Re: Robert Langlands: The Greatest Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of?

#61

> Most mathematicians also agree that the Langlands Program could help find a proof for the Riemann Hypothesis, probably the most famous unsolved mathematical problem (about the distribution of prime numbers). These problems are just as abstract as Langlands’s own work, however, which means his research program as it was originally conceived has little relevance to everyday life. I dunno, figuring out the Riemann Hyp…

No, for any practical applications, we might as well work assume it is true, the same way we assume quantum physics or relativity are true when building stuff.

Re: Robert Langlands: The Greatest Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of?

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? Vector spaces and fields differ in how they define multiplication. In the former, we multiply vectors with scalars while in the latter we multiply two scalars. Also, vector fields are functions from points to vectors whereas field is an algebraic structure.

I'm not entirely sure what he meant, but the flow maps of vector fields are semigroups. If irreversible, they're groups. And a field is like a group and a ring over the same set, right?

A group is a set with a single operation defined on it that abides by certain axioms. A field is a set with two operations defined on it. But the field operations must abide by more axioms than a group operation. While vector spaces and fields are very similar (two operations, similar number of axioms), vector spaces are defined over fields (for example, an element cv is defined where v is a vector and c is a scalar) while fields are not defined over anything -- they are just a structure with two operations and a number of axioms (there's no element cv in a field, but it does have an element c_1 * c_2 where c_i is a scalar).

That said, vector field is a different object. It's a function. Likely named so by physics people while the structures like group/ring/field/etc were named by math folk.

I have no idea what flow maps of vector fields are, but if you give me their definition, it'd be trivial to check if they form a semigroup under a certain operation: we'll just check it for associativity.

To get a hang of this stuff I recommend the following books:

Book of Proof by Richard Hammack (tools of the trade)

Linear Algebra by Kuldeep Singh (rigorous tutorial: combines the rigor of a textbook and the ease of use of tutorial)

Abstract Algebra by the Dos Reis (rigorous tutorial)

Real Analysis by Lara Alcock (this books makes the rigorous definition of sequences trivial)

Real Analysis by Jay Cummings (contains much more info than the one above and is very similar in spirit)

Real Analysis by Rafi Grinberg (takes you from reals to Euclidean Spaces and Metric Spaces)

After that you ccan start reading intro level mathematical physics books to get an easy intro to differential geometry, manifolds and analysis in abstract spaces. Once you get an intuitive hang of this stuff, you can come back to the more brutal pure math setting.

Here, I like Modern Math Physics by Peter Szekeres. It's gentle and more about geometry and less about analysis.

Re: Robert Langlands: The Greatest Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of?

#63
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, a ‘campo’ is also a ‘corpo’ that is commutative.

Can you elaborate? Vector spaces and fields differ in how they define multiplication. In the former, we multiply vectors with scalars while in the latter we multiply two scalars. Also, vector fields are functions from points to vectors whereas field is an algebraic structure.

What I meant was, in some languages 'corpo' is a more general notion of the (algebraic) field, the non-commutative version of which is known in English literature as the "skew field."

Re: Robert Langlands: The Greatest Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of?

#64
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? Vector spaces and fields differ in how they define multiplication. In the former, we multiply vectors with scalars while in the latter we multiply two scalars. Also, vector fields are functions from points to vectors whereas field is an algebraic structure.

What I meant was, in some languages 'corpo' is a more general notion of the (algebraic) field, the non-commutative version of which is known in English literature as the "skew field."

If I understand you correctly, you are saying vector fields and skew fields are the same object. But that's not true, though. The former is a function, the latter is a structure.

Re: Robert Langlands: The Greatest Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of?

#65
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I meant was, in some languages 'corpo' is a more general notion of the (algebraic) field, the non-commutative version of which is known in English literature as the "skew field."

If I understand you correctly, you are saying vector fields and skew fields are the same object. But that's not true, though. The former is a function, the latter is a structure.

In other words: 'campo' = (commutative) field, 'corpo' = field (possibly skew); 'campo vectorial' is something else, of course.

Re: Robert Langlands: The Greatest Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of?

#66
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think problem is, English accent is probably the worst . This is because pronunciation-wise there hardly are other two languages as different as English and French. (The French return the favor, obviously - their accent sounds just as terrible.)

Accent is such a non issue, in the UK the accent can be very different even 30 miles from one another, so let alone someone speaking it with a French, German or Spanish accent. It's still English and 99% of the time you can understand it. I assume the same is true of other languages too.

> Accent is such a non issue

But for the French it apparently is (and understandably so).

Re: Robert Langlands: The Greatest Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of?

#67
post #47

More like greatest mathematician whose work I’ve never understood. Sadly. At least I can reduce Grothendieck to algebraic topology or Wiles to number theory plus that one old problem. Terry Tao to analysis. But Langlands? Interconnectivity of all sub-fields? I’ve got nothing.

I highly recommend reading Edward Frenkel's memoir, Love and Math, which is more or less an up close and personal popular account of the author's involvement with the Langlands Program:

Perhaps the most remarkable part of the book though is the way it makes a serious attempt to tackle the problem of explaining one of the deepest sets of ideas in mathematics, those which go under the name of the “Langlands program”. These ideas have fascinated me for years, and much of what I have learned about them has come from reading some of Frenkel’s great expository articles on the subject. To anyone who wants to learn more about this subject, the best advice for how to proceed is to read the overview in “Love and Math” (which you likely won’t fully understand, but which will give you a general picture and glimpses of what is really going on), and then try reading some of his more technical surveys [...]

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=6266

Re: Robert Langlands: The Greatest Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of?

#68
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that doing well in competitions is a separate question from going on to do amazing research. There are plenty of people who did phenomenally well in competitions and then went on to be successful being mathematicians in other fields, working at Big Co, or starting up their own company, but most of the really, really top mathematicians that I know didn't go in for competitions. There are exceptions, but…

I'm pretty sure the comment you're replying to wasn't so much a serious question as a reference to this little incident on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079

Indeed. I'm glad at least one person got the joke.

Re: Robert Langlands: The Greatest Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of?

#70
post #41

Oh, Robert Langlands! I worked on a short film about him, for the Abel Prize ceremony, last March. http://www.abelprize.no/artikkel/vis.html?tid=73176

Nice short film. Langlands was a theory builder as opposed to someone like Erdos who was more interested in solving problems. Theory builders are often admired, but because the endeavor is so broad, very few of them emerge and even fewer are actually successful. I like the part where he said he began to write before he understood everything, and in order to write he had to discover many things, and even had to discov…

> as opposed

From The Rising Sea: Grothendieck on simplicity and generality by C. McLarty:

Grothendieck describes two styles in mathematics. If you think of a theorem to be proved as a nut to be opened, so as to reach “the nourishing flesh protected by the shell”, then the hammer and chisel principle is: “put the cutting edge of the chisel against the shell and strike hard. If needed, begin again at many different points until the shell cracks—and you are satisfied”. He goes on to say: "I can illustrate the second approach with the same image of a nut to be opened. The first analogy that came to my mind is of immersing the nut in some softening liquid, and why not simply water? From time to time you rub so the liquid penetrates better, and otherwise you let time pass. The shell becomes more flexible through weeks and months—when the time is ripe, hand pressure is enough, the shell opens like a perfectly ripened avocado!"

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