"Clustering-Induced Localization of Quantum Walks on Networks"

One of my papers came out in published form today. Here are some details.

Title: Clustering-Induced Localization of Quantum Walks on Networks

Authors: Lucas Böttcher and Mason A. Porter

"Dynamical Processes on Metric Networks"

A paper of mine was just published in final form. Here are some details.

Title: Dynamical Processes on Metric Networks

Authors: Lucas Böttcher and Mason A. Porter

"A Unified Theory of Randomness"

This article is very cool. It talks about some exciting work that follows up that of people like Wendelin Werner, Oded Schramm, Martin Hairer, and others. The younger author of the pair who are doing many of these great things seems like somebody who is going to be considered strongly for a Fields Medal. (The article doesn't mention this, but this does appear to be at that level.)

In fact, several recent Fields Medals have been awarded for work with deep relationships to statistical mechanics (and related topics like kinetic theory and probability theory), and it took quite some time for these to be considered "acceptable" mathematics topics.

Barry Simon Wins 2016 AMS Steele Prize in Lifetime Achievement

Barry Simon has won the 2016 AMS Steele Prize in Lifetime Achievement. This is richly deserved!

Barry Simon's influence on mathematical physics and numerous related topics has been absolutely huge.

(Regarding his teaching: Barry's version of freshman calculus wasn't a hit with the students, to put it kindly, but his teaching at more advanced levels is extremely good. I was one of the inaugural TAs when he took over the introductory freshman class; it was an interesting experience.)

Jeffreys, Jeffreys, and Logarithms

My host (Marc Feldman) was trained originally as a mathematician, and there are a bunch of mathematics books --- he apparently doesn't use these anymore --- are in the office I am occupying.

There are a couple in there that I have interest in browsing through. For example, I was just looking a bit through the mathematical physics book by the infamous Jeffreys and Jeffreys (3rd ed, 1953). I like the following footnote in the chapter on asymptotics:

"Actually, of course, we should work out 100 log_{10} e and then evaluate by means of a table of logarithms to the base 10. When a multiplying machine is available two uses remain for logarithms to base 10; to work out high powers and logarithms to base e of large numbers."

Anyway, I enjoy the need to explain in 1953 (or earlier, if this comment predates the 3rd edition) that there are still some uses for log base 10.