Author: Alexander Engel

Thomas Friedrich 1949 – 2018

Thomas Friedrich was a German mathematian working in differential geometry and global analysis. He passed away in February 2018. Thomas Friedrich contributed substantially to the development of Berlin mathematics, he was Editor-in-Chief of the journal Annals of Global Analysis and Geometry for more than three decades (and also one of the founding editors-in-chief), and in 2003 he received the … Continue reading "Thomas Friedrich 1949 – 2018"

Strong cosmic censorship conjecture

The cosmic censorship conjectures concern the singularities arising in general relativity. In May the QuantaMagazine published an article (link) about a potential disproof of a strong version of the cosmic censorship conjecture. This article is nicely written and I recommend everybody interested in general relativity reading it. The preprint the QuantaMagazine refers to is arXiv:1710.01722 … Continue reading "Strong cosmic censorship conjecture"

Contractible 3-manifolds and positive scalar curvature

It is known that \(\mathbb{R}^3\) admits a complete metric of uniformly positive scalar curvature. In fact, for any closed manifold \(X\) and any \(k \ge 3\) the manifold \(X \times \mathbb{R}^k\) admits a complete metric of uniformly positive scalar curvature by a result of Rosenberg and Stolz (link). Now there exist contractible, open 3-manifolds which are not … Continue reading "Contractible 3-manifolds and positive scalar curvature"

Prizes, prizes, prizes

Several prizes have been awarded in the past few weeks to mathematicians. Kyoto Prize The Kyoto Prize 2018 in the category Basic Sciences was awarded to Masaki Kashiwara from the RIMS at Kyoto University. (announcement) The Kyoto Prize is awarded annually to “those who have contributed significantly to the scientific, cultural, and spiritual betterment of mankind” … Continue reading "Prizes, prizes, prizes"