Related papers: Arp's Indomitable Universe
In this paper we analyze both the scientific activities of Cahit Arf, a Turkish mathematician, and the social context in which he worked. We also discuss his work and social environment leading to the discovery of Arf invariant, Arf rings,…
We give some personal reflections on the person and scientist Lars Brink and on some of his scientific achievements. Our relations to Lars are briefly described in [1] and [2], while the sources relevant for this text are summarised in [3].
A short essay on the life and mathematical heritage of Coble. A substantially edited version will be part of the series of biographical memoirs of past members of the National Academy of Sciences. Version 2: minor changes. Version 3. Typo…
This is a short tribute to Alexandr Alexandrov (1912--1999).
This paper, which is dedicated to Alan Turing on the 50th anniversary of his death, gives an overview and discusses the philosophical implications of incompleteness, uncomputability and randomness.
The last century saw dramatic challenges to the Laplacian predictability which had underpinned scientific research for around 300 years. Basic to this was Alan Turing's 1936 discovery (along with Alonzo Church) of the existence of…
A portrait of Kurt Goedel with emphasis on his work on relativity theory and idealistic philosophy.
In this article, we describe briefly the highlights and various accomplishments in the personal as well as the academic life of Professor Pranab Kumar Sen.
A brief remembrance of some aspects of the author's scientific interaction with Stephen Hawking. A contribution to Physics Today's March 14, 2018 web page in which Stephen Hawking is remembered by his colleagues.
Incomputability as a mathematical notion arose from work of Alan Turing and Alonzo Church in the 1930s. Like Turing himself, it attracted less attention than it deserved beyond the confines of mathematics. Today our experiences in computer…
We discuss the legacy of Alan Turing and his impact on computability and analysis.
Remarks on the life and work of Paul Erdos.
An obituary of J.R. Dorfman. The focus is on his scientific career and on his many important publications.
This is a biography of Herbert Busemann (1905--1994). The final version will appear in Volume I of the Selected Works of Herbert Busemann (2 volumes, Springer Verlag, to appear in 2017).
About Conway's surreal numbers: A letter to a friend (written in French). In memoriam John Horton Conway.
This is a survey article on the invariant rings of Hopf actions
Rather than offering chronologically ordered encyclopedic knowledge of a lifetime, only some of the most striking events of the existence of this well-known scientist are here pointed out. Sections: Life; Man of laws; Interest in…
We discuss the accuracy of the attribution commonly given to Turing's 1936 paper "On computable numbers..." for the computable undecidability of the halting problem, coming eventually to a nuanced conclusion.
Obituary of Graham Everest (1957-2010)
This is a brief account of the life and work of G\"oran Lindblad.