Back in january

For information: this blog is not closed permanently, it's just that I have no time for blogging until january...

Carissimi, Colista and Frescobaldi

Anybody looking for a glorious musical moment should consider historia di jephte damnatorum lamentatio by Le Parlement de Musique.

The interpretation is faultless, and the solists are quite exceptional, in particular Marion Fourquier (harp) and Elisa Franzetti (soprano).

Reconverted mathematicians

It's refreshing to see that not all mathematicians spend all their lifes on a few (sometimes dubious) ideas.

Gromov seems to be completely into molecular biology now, with a new workshop at IHES where none of the speakers is into maths.

Mumford 's semester-long program at MSRI on image analysis took place rencently.

Tao (one of the future 2006 Fields medalists) recently submitted stuff to something as "applied" as IEEE journals (not really a reconversion this, just yet another area he's relooking) .

Two free books and J.H. Conway

Free books by William Stein on number theory which are not mentionned on the links I've given before are here and here.

Lucky people in Berkeley can attend J.H. Conway's Bowen lectures during the next three days. If you have and feel like writing a few words about it here, please do! Apparently there are a few videos of some other lectures by him here.

DML: Digital Mathematics Library

I've just discovered the DML and the WDML. Superb!

Numdam is really becoming fantastic too.

I wish one day the Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences will be added. Obviously that's a lot of work...

Hamilton at 200

Another birthday, but one which has received too little publicity in my opinion, is that of Sir William Rowan Hamilton.

His impact on both physics and maths really is astonishing and also deserves press coverage, too bad this is already Einstein's year!

John Baez got interwied a while ago for Plus magazine (aimed at a general audience) about quaternions and octonions.

There's so much great stuff to learn out there...

Baby boomers at 60

In the next two years we'll get a lot "conference in honor of (insert name here) on the occasion of his/her 60th birthday".

Here are a few potentially interesting ones (far, far away -- sigh -- hopefully they'll video them...): Delignefest, Margulisfest, Simonfest, ColinDeVerdièrefest, Lodayfest.

Update: Hirschowitzfest , Toledofest, Howefest .