Month: August 2014

2014 Fields Medal and Nevanlinna Prize Winners Announced

The 2014 Fields Medal and Nevanlinna Prize winners were announced yesterday.

General announcement

Nature: “Iranian is first woman to nab highest prize in maths”
Also includes coverage of the Gauss Prize for research that has had an impact outside mathematics, which was awarded to Stanley Osher of the University of California at Los Angeles.)

Great personal profiles with short videos via Quanta Magazine

Artur Avila – A Brazilian Wunderkind Who Calms Chaos

Manjul Bhargava – The Musical, Magical Number Theorist

Martin Hairer – In Noisy Equations, One Who Heard Music

Maryam Mirzakhani – A Tenacious Explorer of Abstract Surfaces

Subhash Khot – A Grand Vision for the Impossible

Technical explanation of their work

Terry Tao (previous Fields Medal Winner): Avila, Bhargava, Hairer, Mirzakhani

 

 

Bucket List: Write A Joke for Robin Williams

In all the sadness of the passing of Robin Williams, I nearly forgot I’d “written” a short joke for him just after I’d first moved to Hollywood.

Killing some time just before I started work at Creative Artists Agency, I finagled my way into a rough-cut screening of Robin William’s iconoclastic role in PATCH ADAMS on the Universal Lot. Following the screening, I had the pleasure of chatting with [read: bum-rushed like a crazy fan] Tom Shadyac for a few minutes on the way out. I told him as a recent grad of Johns Hopkins University and having spent a LOT of time in hospitals, that they were missing their obligatory hospital gown joke. But to give it a karate chop (and because I’d just graduated relatively recently), they should put it into the graduation at the “end” and close on a high note.

I didn’t see or hear anything about it until many months later when I went to Mann’s Chinese Theater for the premiere and saw the final cut of the ending of the film, which I’ve clipped below. Just for today, I’m wearing the same red foam clown nose that I wore to the premiere that night.

Thanks for the laughs Robin.

Bucket List:
. Write a joke for Robin Williams.

http://youtu.be/kx2FhY_akDY