Videos of the Paris event of the Grothendieck Institute

The videos of the recent conference organized by the Grothendieck Institute at the Institut Henri Poincaré are now available from the Institute’s YouTube channel:

The event consisted in a round table with Alain Connes, Johanna Grothendieck and Laurent Lafforgue, moderated by Stéphane Dugowson and preceded by two brief presentations by Mateo Carmona, Coordinator of the Centre for Grothendieckian Studies, and myself.

Enjoy the videos!

Towards a semantic 6G

I am happy to give a talk tomorrow at the “Workshop on Semantic Information and Communication” held at the Lagrange Mathematics and Computing Research Center in Paris.

The workshop, which takes place on the 7th and 8th of March, is entitled “Towards a semantic 6G” and gathers experts from different fields whose research can contribute to the development of new conceptual architectures for communication based on semantic information.

As I shall explain in my talk, topos theory is relevant for the goals of semantic communication, and AI techniques based on semantic information more generally, in several different ways. In particular, given the capacity of toposes of embodying the semantics of a great variety of situations, using toposes as ‘bridges’ enables effective transfers of knowledge across different ways of expressing information (formalized as different ways of presenting toposes):

Semantics as a ‘bridge’

The links to attend the event are available from the conference webpage.

Looking forward to it!

Grothendieck Institute

On 3 December 2022, the inaugural event of the recently founded Grothendieck Institute will take place at 3:00 p.m. in the Aula Magna of the Mondovì campus of the Polytechnic of Turin. The event, which is sponsored by the Municipality of Mondovì, will be held in Italian and will see the participation of numerous guests, including Johanna Grothendieck (Alexander’s daughter and member of the Institute’s Board of Directors), Laurent Lafforgue (member of the Institute’s Scientific Council), Gino Zaccaria (Professor of Philosophy at Bocconi University) and Nicoletta Sabadini (Professor of Computer Science at the University of Insubria). The round table and the subsequent exchange with the public will be moderated by national TV journalist Francesca Ronchin

The title of the event is “All’ascolto della voce delle cose. Un progetto visionario per la matematica e non solo“. The expression “all’ascolto della voce delle cose” belongs to Grothendieck himself, who said “Ce qui fait la qualité de l’inventivité et de l’imagination du chercheur, c’est la qualité de son attention, à l’écoute de la voix des choses” (“The quality of a researcher’s inventiveness and imagination is the quality of his attention, to hearing the voices of things”):

Among the topics that will be addressed in the round table, in a way which is accessible to the general public, are basic research and its applications, scientific creativity, the figure of Alexander Grothendieck as an example of the kind of relationship that can exist between scientific studies, humanistic sensitivity and social commitment, abstraction and its relationship with art, ethics in scientific research.

Looking forward to seeing many of you there!

Conference in honor of Jean-Jacques Szczeciniarz

Tomorrow and Friday, the 24th and 25th November 2022, a conference in honor of Jean-Jacques Szczeciniarz will take place in Paris.

In order to celebrate Jean-Jacques’ work on Copernicus and his reflections on categorial and Grothendieckian mathematics, I shall give (tomorrow at 16.00 French time) a talk entitled “De Copernic à Grothendieck: la puissance du point de vue fecond“, where I shall elaborate on the importance of fruitful points of view in Science by taking as prominent examples the Copernican revolution and Grothendieck’s unifying concept of topos.

For those who wish to attend the conference online, here are the Zoom credentials:

https://u-paris.zoom.us/j/84654497182?pwd=eVBwakRzcmNBNnNkUTJqdHNjeWhaUT09

ID: 846 5449 7182
Code: 005352

Trip to Sweden

Tomorrow I will leave for Sweden for scientific visits to Götheborg and Stockholm.

I will be in Götheborg for participating in the

Workshop in Honour of Thierry Coquand’s 60th Birthday

My talk, entitled “Relative toposes as a generalization of locales“, will be on Thursday 25th at 10:15.

Then I shall leave for Stockholm, where I will give a colloquium lecture for the Stockholm Mathematics Centre (KTH and Stockholm University) on Wednesday 31st at 15:15.

Thanks again to the organisers of these events for their invitations, and looking forward to this trip!

Grothendieck conference

From tomorrow, Tuesday the 24th of May, until Saturday the 28th of May, there will be, physically at Chapman University and virtually on Zoom, a conference celebrating Grothendieck’s work.

The programme, which is available from the conference website, is very rich and consists of several contributions highlighting the relevance of Grothendieck’s ideas across many different fields of knowledge.

I will give my own talk, entitled “On the ‘unifying notion’ of topos“, on Friday 27th at 10 am PST (7pm CEST).

The Zoom link to the conference is  
https://chapman.zoom.us/j/96839483231?from=addon
Meeting ID: 968 3948 3231

Looking forward to seeing many of you attending the conference!

An interview for France Culture

On Thursday 17 February, from 16 to 17 French time, I will be a guest, together with Alain Connes and Laurent Lafforgue, at the scientific radio broadcast La Méthode Scientifique of France Culture, to talk about Grothendieck and crucial themes addressed in his recently published text Récoltes et Semailles, such as toposes and ethical issues in mathematics.

Looking forward to it!

Récoltes et Semailles

The famous autobiographical work in two volumes by Alexander Grothendieck has just been officially published by Gallimard!

This book is a must for anyone who wants to learn about the vision inspiring Grothendieck’s discoveries and reflect on ethical and sociological issues in mathematics and beyond.

I have been invited by the Editor to contribute a short text presenting the book, to be included in a booklet sold together with it and also containing texts by other mathematicians. Here is it:

An update: Sayantan Roy @sayantan-roy has kindly translated my text into English. Here is his translation: