## MathSciNet at the MCA in Montreal

I just came back from the Mathematical Congress of the Americas in Montreal.   It was an intense week of mathematics.  Besides having excellent invited and plenary lectures, there were 70 special sessions!  There were five plenary lectures:  Manuel del Pino (Universidad de Chile); Shafrira Goldwasser (MIT); Peter Ozsvath (Princeton University); Yuval Peres (Microsoft Research); and Kannan Soundararajan (Stanford University).  Erik Demaine (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Étienne Ghys (École Normale Supérieure de Lyon) gave well-received public lectures.  The list of invited speakers is here.   Continue reading

## Maryam Mirzakhani

Maryam Mirzakhani is known for her work on moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces.  Some of her most cited work looks at the moduli space of a genus $g$ Riemann surface with $n$ geodesic boundary components.  In two of her papers, she computes the volume of these moduli spaces, with respect to the Weil-Petersson metric (see below).  In another, she provides a means for counting the number of simple closed geodesics of length at most $L$. Mirzakhani is also known for her work on billiards (see the review of her paper with Eskin and Mohammadi below), a subject closely related to moduli space questions.  Teichmüller theory and the geometry of moduli spaces are famously deep subjects.  Making progress requires mastering large areas of analysis, dynamical systems, differential geometry, algebraic geometry, and topology.  I can only appreciate Mirzakhani’s work superficially, as I have not mastered those subjects.   Instead, some reviews of her work are reproduced below.   Continue reading

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## Laure Saint-Raymond

Laure Saint-Raymond is a mathematician working in partial differential equations, fluid mechanics, and statistical mechanics.  She is a professor at l’École Normale Supérieure de Paris and the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (also known as Paris VI).  In 2013, she became the youngest member ever elected to the French Academy of Sciences, in the Mechanics and Computer Science section, where several other top-notch mathematicians are members.   Continue reading

## Yves Meyer wins the Abel Prize

Yves Meyer has been selected to win the 2017 Abel Prize.  The citation is “for his pivotal role in the development of the mathematical theory of wavelets”.  His work is certainly well known within mathematics, especially within harmonic analysis and in its important applications in image processing, data compression, signal analysis, and many other modern settings.    Continue reading

## Karen Smith

Karen Smith is a mathematician at the University of Michigan, which is where she also did her Ph.D.  Her thesis was on tight closure, an important topic in commutative algebra.  There is, of course,  a lot of overlap between commutative algebra and algebraic geometry, and Smith’s publications demonstrate this mix with about three quarters of them being in commutative algebra and a quarter in algebraic geometry.  Her publications are also a good demonstration of the collaborative nature of mathematics.  Continue reading

## Quanta Magazine

Quanta Magazine, from the Simons Foundation, has been publishing some excellent articles about mathematics.  It is not a research journal, so Mathematical Reviews doesn’t cover it.  Nevertheless, if you want to dig deeper into some of the mathematical issues discussed in their articles, MathSciNet is a great tool for doing so.

## #Citations

Mathematicians are good at counting.  We can count the number of ways to roll  a 7 with two dice.  (Answer = 6.) We can count the number of ways to shuffle a deck of cards so that every card is not in its original position.  (Answer = $!52$ = 29672484407795138298279444403649511427278111361911893663894333196201.)  We can count the number of lines on a cubic surface in $mathbf{CP}^3$. (Answer = 27.)   Sometimes we can count, but we don’t really know what the actual number is, such as when we count the minimum number of guests that must be invited so that at least $m$ will know each other or at least $n$ will not know each other.  (Answer = the Ramsey number $R(m, n)$.)  Many times, it is better to use an asymptotic estimate, such as Stirling’s formula.  When we can’t estimate, we can bound, such as Conrey’s result that more than two-fifths of the zeros of the Riemann zeta function are on the critical line.  Lately, we (along with our colleagues in other disciplines) have started counting citations.   Continue reading

Posted in General information | 4 Comments

## Things have changed

We have given MathSciNet some upgrades.

As of January 3rd, 2017, MathSciNet will be running on new software, which has allowed us to add some great new features, with more to come in February 2017.  This post provides some highlights of how MathSciNet is bigger, better, faster, more.

And please visit the AMS Booth at the JMM in Atlanta to see demonstrations of the new features of MathSciNet, as well as to meet some of the Editors from Mathematical Reviews.  There will be free access to MathSciNet at JMM!

Posted in Announcements | 29 Comments

## AMS Prizes and Awards – 2017

The AMS is announcing the winners of some of the major prizes that they will award at the upcoming Joint Mathematical Meetings in Atlanta (January 4-7, 2017).  The Joint Prize Session, where prizes from the various participating societies will be presented, takes place on Thursday, January 5 4:25 p.m.-5:25 p.m. in the Atrium Ballroom of the Marriott Marquis. Continue reading

## Twenty thousand reviewers!

As of November 12, Mathematical Reviews has over 20,000 active reviewers!  The input of researchers from around the world helps to make MathSciNet such a valuable tool.  We are truly grateful for your efforts. Thank you!

You can see other statistics about us at MathSciNet by the Numbers.

Posted in Announcements, General information | 1 Comment