### Shaw Prize 2020

The Shaw Prize 2020 in the Mathematical Sciences goes to Alexander Beilinson and David Kazhdan “for their huge influence on and profound contributions to representation theory, as well as many other areas of mathematics.” More information can be found here: https://www.shawprize.org/laureates/mathematical-sciences/2020.

### MINTchallenge

Der Club MINT, eine Initiative des Stifterverbands, ruft regelmäßig die MINTchallenges aus in denen “schlaue Ideen zur Lösung aktueller Herausforderungen der MINT-Bildung an Hochschulen” gesucht werden. In der aktuellen MINTchallenge sucht der Stifterverband nach “kreativen, digitalen Alternativen zu Präsenzveranstaltungen an Hochschulen, die das MINT-Studium auch nach der Corona-Pandemie nachhaltig verbessern.” Bewerbungsschluss ist der 13. Juni … Continue reading "MINTchallenge"

### Instability of Anti-de Sitter Space-Time

A recent article in the QuantaMagazine (link) discusses a paper of Georgios Moschidis (arXiv:1812.04268) who proved instability of Anti-de Sitter space-time for a certain Einstein-matter system. Recall that the Anti-de Sitter space-time is the maximally symmetric solution of the vacuum Einstein equations in the presence of a negative cosmological constant. One can attach a boundary-at-infinity to Anti-de Sitter … Continue reading "Instability of Anti-de Sitter Space-Time"

### EMS Prizes 2020

Though the 8th European Congress of Mathematics was postponed to 2021, the recipients of the EMS Prizes 2020 were already announced: https://8ecm.si/news/69.

### Local-to-global principles for the topology of boundaries of hyperbolic groups

Two weeks ago a paper was posted (by Benjamin Barrett) on the arXiv (arXiv:2004.11650) proving the following theorem about Gromov boundaries of word hyperbolic groups: Let $$G$$ be a one-ended hyperbolic group. Then $$\partial G$$ is locally simply-connected if and only if for every point $$\xi\in \partial G$$ the space $$\partial G \setminus \xi$$ is … Continue reading "Local-to-global principles for the topology of boundaries of hyperbolic groups"

### Remote teaching for the working mathematician

Ich bekam als Reaktion auf meinen Blogbeitrag zu Remote teaching einige eMails, in denen nach konkretem Rat und praktischen Tips gefragt wurde für das kommende Semester. Vorlesungen Präsentiert man den Studierenden den Stoff mit Hilfe eines ausführlichen Skriptes oder aufgezeichneten Videos, so sollte man ihnen meiner Meinung nach konkrete Arbeitsanweisungen zum Durcharbeiten des Materials geben. … Continue reading "Remote teaching for the working mathematician"

### Aspherical manifolds and positive scalar curvature

Recall the following conjecture about aspherical manifolds (i.e., manifolds whose universal cover is contractible): If M is a closed, aspherical manifold, then M does not admit any Riemannian metric of positive scalar curvature. In January I saw a preprint being posted on the arXiv (2001.02644) claiming to have resolved this conjecture. If it turns out … Continue reading "Aspherical manifolds and positive scalar curvature"

### Remote teaching

The Corona Crisis is throwing off our lives. I was also not spared, though this is now probably complaining on a high comfort level: As some of you know, I was on a sabbatical since last fall traveling with my wife through Southeast Europe (check our travel blog Engel auf Reisen), but due to the … Continue reading "Remote teaching"

### A Prime Breakthrough

It seems that at the beginning of this year a major breakthrough on prime numbers was achieved. I learned about it from this blog: link. Let me summarize the result quickly for you if you don’t want to read the other blog post. Almost a hundred years ago Jensen and Pólya proved that the Riemannian … Continue reading "A Prime Breakthrough"

### Laplace operator and covering spaces

Let M be a closed Riemannian manifold and denote by X its universal covering space equipped with the pulled back Riemannian metric. There is an intimate relation between the Laplace operator on X and the fundamental group of M. One example of this is the result of Brooks from 1981: the fundamental group of M … Continue reading "Laplace operator and covering spaces"