Sir Michael Atiyah visited the Simons Center in the Fall of 2011 during which time he met with Nigel Hitchin, Robion Kirby, and John Morgan. In this conversation Sir Michael responds to questions which lead him to reflect on his life in mathematics and to expound on his view of mathematics.
Brian Greene is “the single best explainer of abstruse concepts in the world today.” He is the co-director of the Center for Strings, Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics at Columbia University. In his latest book “The hidden reality,” he brings the reader on a journey through the parallel universes of the string theory landscape.
An interview with Konstantin Likharev. He joined the Stony Brook Physics Department in 1991, after a long and successful career at Moscow State University. He is a pioneer in nano-electronics and the developer of CrossNets, a new kind of chip that could change the way we think about computers.
An interview with Rajesh Gopakumar. He got his PhD from Princeton, under the supervision of David Gross, and he is now at the Harish-Chandra Institute for Theoretical Physics in Allahabad, India.
An interview with Itay Yavin. The Israeli physicist, now at McMaster University in Canada, obtained his PhD at Harvard under the supervision of Nima Arkani-Hamed. He is a leading expert in physics beyond the Standard Model and dark matter.
An interview with C.N. Yang. A long-time member of Stony Brook University, Yang received the Nobel Prize in 1957 for his discovery of parity violation, together with T.D. Lee. In 1966 Yang founded the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook, that now bears his name.
An interview with Ed Witten. Witten, at the Institute for Advanced Study, is the father of M-theory and his papers shape the way we understand theoretical physics today.
Valerie Gonzalez works at the Institute for the Study of Islamic civilization of the Aga Khan University in London. She attended the workshop on “Strings, supersymmetry and gauge theories,” held at Stony Brook, where she told an attentive audience of string theorists and mathematicians about the close relationship between geometric abstraction and sacred art.
An interview with Erik Verlinde. The Dutch physicist, now at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Amsterdam, was recently awarded the $2.5 million Spinoza Prize for his recent idea on entropic gravity.
An interview with Sergei Dubovsky. The Russian physicist, now at the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics at NYU, is an expert in physics beyond the Standard Model. He is a strong advocate of the Multiverse scenario of String Theory.
