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Occasionally, there has been a suggestion to start a meta question to collect information that might be of interest to the MO community. This is an attempt to start such a thread.
Is there any news that you think would be of wide interest to the MO community? Please exercise your discretion in any answers, and your judgement on the appropriateness or significance of any event.
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As nobody mentioned this here so far -- since last month (January 2021), zbMATH is completely open access.
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Alan Turing will appear on the Bank of England's new ${\large\unicode{xA3}} 50$ note -- with a photo, a quote, and some lines from his 1936 paper in the Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society: "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem."
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Not an obituary, but not good news either.
There seem to be an effort to eliminate pure mathematics from the University of Leicester. Anyone who is interested in signing a petition to try and raise awareness of how severe of a mistake this may be can do so here:
https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/mathematics-is-not-redundant
The ironic part is that the proposed change is under a restructuring effort named "Shaping for Excellence". Please help to spread the word.
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The 2018 Fields medal winners are Caucher Birkar, Alessio Figalli, Peter Scholze, and Akshay Venkatesh. Brief citations and longer descriptions of their work are available on the IMU website.
Peter Scholze has explained some of the key ideas in his research on MO, most notably in this introductory post.
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The recipients of the 2022 Fields medals were announced (in this order) at ICM 2022:
- Hugo Duminil-Copin
- June Huh
- James Maynard
- Maryna Viazovska
The Ladyzhenskaya medal was awarded to Svetlana Jitomirskaya, the Abacus medal was awarded to Mark Braverman, the Gauss prize to Elliott H. Lieb, the Chern medal to Barry Mazur, and the Leelavati prize to Nikolai Andreev.
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Congratulations to J.D. Hamkins
Please join us in wishing J.D. Hamkins the best of luck as Professor of Logic in the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University, and Sir Peter Strawson Fellow in Philosophy, University College, Oxford. Hopefully he'll continue his contributions to this site.
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There is now a plaque in Paris (between the Luxembourg Gardens and the Pantheon) to commemorate the first meeting of Bourbaki (10 December 1934) at their local Burger King!
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Terry Tao has been awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia. This is a highest-level civilian honour roughly equivalent to the USA's Presidential Medal of Freedom, or the French Legion of Honour. He's quoted by Australia's ABC news as saying "It's sort of stunning that my country has given me this recognition".
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Misha Verbitsky has been arrested in Armenia and is facing extradition to Russia, where he will be in grave danger. Some info can be found here.
Edit: (July 22) the above link now writes "Update: he was freed and left Armenia"; more precisely this link indicates he has left Armenia (on June 16, 2026) and is safe. He had been detained on June 12, freed from custody on June 15, initially without being allowed to quit Armenian territory.
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I am very sad to report that Misha Kapovich passed away on June 14, 2026, aged 63. Some more information can be found in his brother Ilya's announcement to the geometric group theory mailing list here.
Misha was a truly excellent mathematician and long-time user of MathOverflow.
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Maria Yakerson has asked me to post the following announcement, since it could be interesting for the MO community
Dear all,
I would like to announce the YouTube channel "Math-life balance", where I am posting my online-interviews with mathematicians:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYRR0SgbYH59htIHkwTbqMw
In these non-professional interviews I ask our colleagues about their personal experience in math, about different aspects of mathematician's job, about their struggles and lifehacks. I imagine, it could be useful for our community, especially for young mathematicians. While we discuss serious matters, there's a lot of laughter and storytelling involved, so I hope that would be a new source of joy during lockdown time!
I plan to post videos on Fridays at 6 pm CET. The first interview, with Inna Zakharevich (Cornell University), is already available today. The second interview, with Hélène Esnault (Freie Universität Berlin), will be available next Friday. The updates to the schedule of interviews will appear here:
https://www.muramatik.com/math-life-balance/
A side-note: I've turned off comments on the channel in order to avoid inappropriate comments from spammers, often appearing on Youtube (and I can't moderate a discussion elsewhere myself, sorry!). In case you have comments, critics or encouragement for me, feel free to send me an email!
Please spread the word! I would especially appreciate if you share the link with your students.
All the best, Mura Yakerson
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Leiden Declaration on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics
This declaration calls for action to address the challenges posed by the use of artificial intelligence within mathematics research. It is the result of a community initiative and is endorsed by the International Mathematical Union (IMU).
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Vaughan Jones has passed away at the age of 67. I think others on MO may be better placed than me [YC] to comment on the depth and impact of his work on subfactors and his introduction of what became known as the Jones polynomial in knot theory.
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I am very sad to report that Joël Bellaïche, a long-term contributor to MO, passed away on Monday, 30 May 2022.
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