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Pierre Deligne Wins Abel Prize For Contributions To Algebraic Geometry
ananyo writes "Belgian mathematician Pierre Deligne completed the work for which he became celebrated nearly four decades ago, but that fertile contribution to number theory has now earned him the Abel Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in mathematics. The prize is worth 6 million Norwegian krone (about US$1 million). In short, Deligne proved one of the four Weil conjectures (he proved the hardest; his mentor, Alexander Grothendieck, had proved the second conjecture in 1965) and went on to tools such as l-adic cohomology to extend algebraic geometry and to relate it to other areas of maths. 'To some extent, I feel that this money belongs to mathematics, not to me,' Deligne said, via webcast."
But in a fuller extent, I'm going to be happy to spend it...
The first Deligne number has just been assigned. Pierre Deligne's number is 0.
"Belgium" is the most offensive word in the galaxy. This is a declaration of war!
Where's my towel?!
'To some extent, I feel that this money belongs to mathematics, not to me,' Deligne said, via webcast, to which Deligne quickly followed up with "...but the money's mine bitches!!"
I'm wondering what the use of these prizes is. I thought most of them were created to help the researches, but if you only get it after you've retired, what's the use?
of course the problem is with newer research that it's hard to estimate its longterm value (and if there was no fraud)
but maybe they should just give these guys a nice medal, and invest the rest of the money in current promising research that probably desperately needs it?
... I feel that this money belongs to mathematics, not to me,' Deligne said, via webcast."
He then went on to demonstrate mathematically that "some" is less than "all" by grabbing the check and running for the hills.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
I don't know if this was intentional, but I suspect it was: '“The nice thing about mathematics is doing mathematics,” Deligne said. “The prizes come in addition.”' Ha! Math humor is the best humor.
Why can't these guys just graciously accept the prize, without claiming or implying they don't deserve it?
So I'm a software programmer and used to be a math tutor. My college hired me after I finished 18 week self-paced Algebra in 7 weeks. That's about all the further I get into besides Quickbooks and customer PC build quotes but this still doesn't seem right to me. Am I understanding this correctly?
Weil wanted to prove that just because an area has a finite length, that means there's an actual, real number of individual points in it? Um, if you think there's 1 million points in an area or line or whatever, make the points smaller and you've got 2 million for example. Think that's the answer, make the points smaller again. This is similar to black hole singularity theory. What is the width of a black hole singularity? Wide enough to exist but infinitely small besides that...in other words, not a value that can be expressed as a real number. The same goes for points in a geometrical area, so there are infinite points. How could anyone prove something that's not true at all? Or am I completely misinterpreting the wording of the stated Weil conjectures?
If that money belongs to mathematics, then we get to claim all HFT hedge funds as well.
They are only using integer coordinates. I do not know the math well, but I suspect that is why it is finite. Also, there are different sizes of infinity. For example, the "number set of all numbers" versus the "number set of all positive odd number integers".
From the article: "The Weil conjectures concern the points on algebraic varieties that have integer coordinates (in the case of the circle, x and y must be whole numbers). The number of such solutions — typically, there are only finitely many — can be calculated from a formula called the zeta function."
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Give that he spent decades of his life slaving away over complex mathematical proofs, he really ought use his well deserved prize money to buy
Hookers
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
I was wondering if somebody could explain me the practical applications of the Weil conjectures.
I guess this can be applied to cryptography but it may be also applicable to computer theory.
Deligne is a huge mathematician, but :
- Grothendieck give Deligne a lot of unpublished things, to be published;
- Deligne use it, but never publish it,
- Deligne made everything to hide it, and to let others think Grothendieck was fool.
Deligne use (for his only use) the tools given by Grothendieck, but hide and destroyed the spirit of it.
Even without this awful things he does, Deligne is on of the very big mathematician.
But mathematics lose a lot in this malversations.
Weren't you?
Since "We're all the same", and 'Diversity is our strength", or so our Jewish 'masters' keep telling us, over and over again.
I bet you would much rather live in an all white country.
After all, it seems as if half the third world would much rather live among white people than THEIR OWN KIND...
The guy's name is "deligne", meaning "of line" in french, but also homophone of "deux lignes", "two lines".
Algebraic geometry is appropriately a great field for him.
I will cheerfully give him the ABA and account number for "mathematics" for him to wire the funds to.
JJ
Why is this not modded insightful??