Mathematicians are fascinated by the elegance and beauty of the ideas behind mathematical theories. Their personal stories are equally important and interesting as their discoveries.
It is was the second time yesterday in a one week time and the fourth in a one month time that I came across Ramsey numbers. In the beginning I thought it was just a coincidence.
On October 6th 2020 Sir Roger Penrose was awarded, jointly with Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez, the nobel prize for physics for their groundbreaking discoveries concerning black holes.
I did a thought experiment: what would have happened to the world if corona would have hit us in 1990? Or in 2000? So my thoughts went back to my early years as an academic, wondering how we would have coped with the pandemic a few decades ago.
In mathematics it is almost impossible not to encounter the name of Paul Erdős. Much of his work centered around discrete mathematics, cracking many previously unsolved problems in the field.
Birgit Sollie is a PhD student at the VU Amsterdam, where she does research in stochastic processes and mathematical biology. In this interview she talks about her research and her motivation for doing mathematics.
