Related papers: Emile Borel's difficult days in 1941
This book represents a continuation, an elaboration, and possibly a clear explanation of the ideas which were expounded in the previous book Time and Methods in Environmental Interfaces Modeling (henceforth abbreviated as TM, Mihailovic et…
The degree of Doctor of Sciences, honoris causa, was conferred on Raoul Bott by McGill University in 1987. Much of the work to make this happen was done by Carl Herz. Some of the author's personal recollections of both professors are…
Some Goedel centenary reflections on whether incompleteness is really serious, and whether mathematics should be done somewhat differently, based on using algorithmic complexity measured in bits of information. [Enriques lecture given…
The text below was written during two visits that Daniel Segal made at Universit{\'e} Paris 13. Danny stayed at Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers the summers of 2008 and 2009 to participate in the exploration of a novel lead in the field…
The discovery of quantum mechanics at the beginning of the last century led to a revolution of the physical world view. Modern experiments, made possible by new techniques on the border of the classical and the quantum regimes offer new…
Scientific research is and was at all times a transnational (global) activity. In this respect, it crosses several borders: national, cultural, and ideological. Even in times when physical borders separated the scientific community,…
In view of the European Strategy for Particle Physics process, the French HEP community has organized a national process of collecting written contributions and has pursued a series of workshops culminating with a national symposium held in…
These reminiscences are about the "dark ages" of algorithmic information theory in the USSR. After a great interest in this topic in 1960s and the beginning of 1970s the number of people working in this area in the USSR decreased…
During a first St. Petersburg period Leonhard Euler, in his early twenties, became interested in the Basel problem: summing the series of inverse squares (posed by Pietro Mengoli in mid 17th century). In the words of Andre Weil (1989) "as…
Experimental tests on `time dilation' began in 1938 with Ives and Stilwell's work of the transverse Doppler effect due to atoms in inertial flight. Rossi and Hall (1941) inaugurated the era of fast moving elementary particles that dominated…
100 prisoners and a light bulb is a long standing mathematical puzzle. The problem was studied mostly in 2002 [5], 2003 [1], and 2004 [3]. Solutions in published articles had average number of visits above 3850, but best solutions on forums…
"Mathematicians, like physicists, are pushed by a strong fascination. Research in mathematics is hard, it is intellectually painful even if it is rewarding, and you would not do it without some strong urge." [D. Ruelle]. We shall give some…
The present document is a mathematical-literary fiction, commemorating the centenary of the death of Anatole France (April 16, 1844 - October 12, 1924) and which, at the same time, pays tribute to Nicolas Bourbaki and his "Godparents".…
The history of computability theory and and the history of analysis are surprisingly intertwined since the beginning of the twentieth century. For one, \'Emil Borel discussed his ideas on computable real number functions in his introduction…
During the First World War, the status of energy conservation in general relativity was one of the most hotly debated questions surrounding Einstein's new theory of gravitation. His approach to this aspect of general relativity differed…
Euler stressed the importance of hypotheses, which he thought were the only means of arriving at a certain knowledge of the physical causes, essential to establish the laws of physics. This thought was communicated to Emilie du Chatelet in…
We applied a set of standard bibliometric indicators to monitor the scientific state-of-arte of 500 universities worldwide and constructed a ranking on the basis of these indicators (Leiden Ranking 2010). We find a dramatic and hitherto…
We study spatiotemporal regularities of electoral results and turnout rates for each municipality (or polling station) concerning French elections between 1992 and 2007. We try to account for the data using models based on a simple…
Should teachers concentrate on critical thinking, estimation, measurement, and graphing rather than college-clone algorithmic physics in grades K--12? Thus far physics education research offers little substantive guidance. Mathematics…
This paper collects some problems that I have encountered during the years, have puzzled me and which, to the best of my knowledge, are still open. Most of them are well-known and have been first stated by other authors. In this sad season…