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emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Aug 18

Kudos to Terry Tao for this:

newsletter.ofthebrave.org/p/im-an-awar...

I’m an award-winning mathematician. Trump just cut my funding.

The “Mozart of Math” tried to stay out of politics. Then it came for his research.

newsletter.ofthebrave.org

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emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Aug 7

@sciam.bsky.social gave me the opportunity to share some personal thoughts about the recently reported AI results from the #imo2025:

www.scientificamerican.com/article/math...

AI Crushed the Math Olympiad—Or Did It?

AI models supposedly did well on International Math Olympiad problems, but how they got their answers reminds us why we still need people doing math

www.scientificamerican.com

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Reposted

Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · Aug 1

While reporting, I stumbled across a recent talk that Tao gave on the subject of his latest research. youtu.be/cXqz5hgxlLM

In June, Tao gave an online talk on the twin primes conjecture as part of Scientific Webinars in Solidarity with Palestine. “Sometimes you wonder what’s the point of doing mathematics in such a time,” he said to the virtual audience. “But at least one thing that mathematics offers is that it’s at least one place where we can actually resolve even very bitter disputes.”

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Reposted

Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · Aug 1

Math at UCLA suffered the greatest blow.

I spoke with Terry Tao—Fields Medalist and arguably the preeminent mathematician of his generation—who is apparently now doing his summer research in number theory without external funding.

The suspensions landed perhaps most heavily in math. NSF suspended a $25 million grant for the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM), an international center at UCLA that hosts about 2000 visiting researchers every year for workshops and other programs. One of its stars, Terence Tao, a Fields Medal winner frequently named as one of the greatest living mathematicians, also had his only NSF grant suspended. The $750,000 award was in its first year and supported Tao’s own research and a handful of graduate students in developing tools to tell whether a set of numbers is structured or random. Tao says he now cannot offer research assistant opportunities during the academic year, and he calls the cuts to IPAM “quite disastrous.”

Tao’s ultimate goal is to use the tools to solve the twin primes conjecture, a centuries-old problem in number theory that suggests there are an infinite number of prime pairs that differ by two, like five and seven. But the NSF grant provided the vast majority of outside support for his UCLA salary. “I’m currently doing summer research unfunded,” he says.

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Reposted

Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · Aug 1

The Trump administration is launching a new wave of attacks on universities, and UCLA is the latest target.

My reporting on how the university has been hit and how some of its scientists are responding:
www.science.org/content/arti...

NSF and NIH suspend grants to UCLA

Move follows Trump administration finding that school didn’t effectively combat antisemitism

www.science.org

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emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Jul 11

One thing I've always appreciated about the NSF is their broad mission to "promote the progress of science" both through new research and its public communication. See the following thread for #DMSFunded work describing recent developments in category theory, homotopy theory, and formalization:

emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Jun 30

I'm halfway through the @londmathsoc.bsky.social Hardy Lecture Tour. Titles and abstracts can all be found here:

emilyriehl.github.io/talks/

and slides (when available) will eventually be added.

Talks

academic webpage for Emily Riehl

emilyriehl.github.io

emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Jul 7

In particular, I'll be highlighting three essays by
@federicoardila.bsky.social, Denis R. Hirschfeldt, and @ijlaba.bsky.social linked from the last page of the slides.

emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Jul 7

This talk revisits a conversation held at Johns Hopkins in 2019 the proceedings of which were published by the
@amermathsoc.bsky.social

bookstore.ams.org/mbk-140

A Conversation on Professional Norms in Mathematics

bookstore.ams.org

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emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Jul 7

the mathematical landscape. We will raise questions related to building communities in which all mathematicians can flourish, rewarding collective work, organizing labor, confronting climate change, and anticipating AI.''

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emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Jul 7

Norms are local — they are how individuals interact with each other and how individuals act in an institution — and global — our work at the local level building community glues to the work of our colleagues at other institutions, creating a systemic awareness and change across

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emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Jul 7

Abstract: ``This talk will report on a multi-year conversation that aims to critically examine the cultural practices that affect the mathematics profession with a particular focus on our often unstated professional norms.

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emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Jul 7

Today is the final stop on the @londmathsoc.bsky.social
Hardy Lecture Tour. I'm in Bristol to give a talk entitled “A conversation on professional norms in mathematics”

Slides are here:

emilyriehl.github.io/files/norms-...

emilyriehl.github.io

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emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Jul 4

Today's program at the LMS General Meeting also features a lecture by Clark Barwick on "The geometry of ∞-categories".

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emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Jul 4

We argue that deploying a bespoke synthetic formal system for a particular kind of mathematical object — ∞-categories in this instance — is a promising tactic to simplifying definitions and proofs, without sacrificing rigor."

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emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Jul 4

After considering the role that category theory and ∞-category theory play in 20th and 21st century mathematics, we describe a radical potential solution to these problems: to change the foundation system.

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emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Jul 4

And will proofs that deploy ∞-categorical technology ever become formalizable, verifiable by a computer proof assistant?

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emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Jul 4

Put more pithily, will we ever be able to distill ∞-category down to the point that it could be taught to undergraduates, much like ordinary 1-category theory is sometimes taught today?

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emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Jul 4

Abstract:"While the last decades have seen considerable advances in our understanding of ∞-category theory, experts in the field have not yet solved the problem that confronts users of the theory: namely how to develop proficiency with this technology on a compressed time scale.

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emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Jul 4

Today I'll be giving the @londmathsoc.bsky.social Hardy lecture with the title

“Could we teach ∞-category theory to undergraduates or to a computer?”

Slides are finally finished, available here:

emilyriehl.github.io/files/hardy-...

emilyriehl.github.io

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emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Jul 3

Finally is the repository of games found at the Lean Games Server:

adam.math.hhu.de

Lean Game Server

You need to enable JavaScript to use the Lean Game Server, as it is built using React.

adam.math.hhu.de

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emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Jul 3

Next is Egbert Rijke's "Introduction to homotopy type theory" to be published next month by @cambup-polsci.cambridge.org

arxiv.org/abs/2212.11082

Introduction to Homotopy Type Theory

This is an introductory textbook to univalent mathematics and homotopy type theory, a mathematical foundation that takes advantage of the structural nature of mathematical definitions and construction...

arxiv.org

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emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Jul 3

Frankly the highlight of this talk is the list of references at the end, starting with Clive Newstead's wonderful textbook "An infinite descent into pure mathematics."

infinitedescent.xyz

An Infinite Descent into Pure Mathematics

'Undergraduate pure mathematics textbook with an emphasis on proof-writing and problem-solving skills.

infinitedescent.xyz

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emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Jul 3

Equally, intuitions built from an early informal introduction to dependent type theory will make it easier for those who aspire to write computer formalized proofs later on."

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emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Jul 3

Thus, there is an opportunity to practice writing proofs in this formal system by interacting with computer proof assistants such as Rocq or Lean.

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emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · Jul 3

Furthermore, dependent type theory is the formal system used by many computer proof assistants both “under the hood” to verify the correctness of proofs and in the vernacular language with which they interact with the user.

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