Vote Villani!
Who is Cédric Villani? Cédric Villani is many things: a rock star mathematician, a Fields medalist, and a bestselling author. He is also running as a member of the party La République En Marche! for the National Assembly in France. With shoulder length hair, cravat, and spider brooch, Villani does not look like your typical mathematician. He is certainly not…
You can’t hide from the primes
What are primes? A prime number is a positive integer with exactly two different divisors. For example, 2 is prime, as 1 and 2 divide it. The same is true for 3, 5, and 7. But 6 is not prime as it has four divisors 1, 2, 3 and 6. On first glance, we may think…
Interview with a mathematician: Lisa Jeffrey
I met Lisa Jeffrey in Ottawa this February, where we worked together on the NSERC Evaluation Group for Mathematics & Statistics. We walked back to the hotel from dinner one evening and discussed her field of symplectic geometry, which was largely a mystery to me. She described the symplectic camel and I knew then I had to learn…
Interview with a mathematician: Barry Mazur
Barry Mazur is the Gerhard Gade University Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Harvard University. Barry is one the world’s leading experts on number theory, and his work focuses on Diophantine geometry and elliptic curves. His research in topology is also legendary, and he settled the generalized Schoenflies problem as a doctoral student. He is highly awarded,…