Michael J. Hopkins: The great wild manifold rodeo: Dennis Sullivan in algebraic topology

This lecture was held by Michael J. Hopkins at The University of Oslo, May 25, 2022 and was part of the Abel Prize lectures held in connection with the Abel Prize Week celebrations.

Hopkins is an American mathematician known for his work in algebraic topology. He is currently a professor of pure and applied mathematics at Harvard University.⁠

[andrewharrison]

Upvoted

That was strangely free of mathematics but heck of a sales pitch for the subject and the cutting edge of research.

It feels like the front page of a road map that shows you which page the other maps are on. Now I know that there are these other pages and each page represents a place I haven't been and want to visit.

[amiraslkhalili]

25:22 what does he ( what do you ) mean, dimension ? when he ( you ) say 10-dimension ?

[imrematajz]

7:26 Nicholas Bourbaki: was not a physical person but a group of influential mathematicians. 5 mathematicians (Henri Cartan, Claude Chevalley, Jean Delsarte, André Weil, and Jean Dieudonné) formed a group to not only repair the fractured community but to set the curriculum for the next 2 decades. However, they didn’t realize they were setting in motion a multi-generational endeavor to rethink the foundations of mathematics. They also delighted and annoyed the rest of the mathematical community along the way.
They would soon comically name their group after Charles-Denis Bourbaki, a French general famous for his spectacular failures during the Franco-Prussian War. Nicolas is thought by some to refer to St. Nicolas, perhaps suggesting the group knew the gifts they were about to bring to the struggling mathematics community.

[tonys]

I left pure mathematics within five years of finishing my Ph.D in the early 70s. I consider those spending their entire careers in this math fantasy world to be with stunted life maturation. Some describe them as useless, I categorize them as chess players. There’s a lot of self gratification in that group.

[amiraslkhalili]

As far as i can understand, nothing has been added to geometry . What bites me is the sentence " .... changed geometry forever ", from the mouth of Abel Committee representative ! Shame on you, that think, world is west, and Greco- waspish people were and are the only Noble ones !