The complex math that Lauda and the other researchers are exploring centers on topology. Simons collaboration aims to solve knotty math problems
The remaining $6.9 million is divided among 10 other institutions: Caltech, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, UCLA, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Columbia, Stanford, Princeton and Harvard universities, as well as the Centre for Quantum Mathematics at Southern Denmark University and the University of Zurich.
It’s one of the largest awards ever obtained for USC Dornsife’s math department. Lauda as director, along with grant co-principal investigator Cris Negron, assistant professor of mathematics, brings nearly 14% of the total - about $1.1 million - to USC. The funding comes from the Simons Foundation. The grant is unique in that it is sufficiently large to fund a sizable team working in a similar direction and will support extended visits by team members and other experts that will enhance the research activities and community at USC, says Lauda, who directs the collaboration. Lauda led the charge to obtain the prestigious grant, which establishes the Simons Collaboration on New Structures in Low-Dimensional Topology. “In math, all we typically need is a paper and pencil, so grants tend to be much less,” says Aaron Lauda, professor of mathematics and physics and astronomy at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Most grants funding science go to experimental equipment, postdoctoral scholars, graduate students and other expensive resources. That’s $2 million per year, and a few more digits than are typically found on grants awarded for math research. The simple math adds up to an exceptional amount of money - $8 million, in fact - to study the other, more complex math over the next four years. This story involves two kinds of math: simple and very complex. USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West In addition to an annotated Flatland and a trippy follow-up ( Flatterland, natch), he has collaborated on four educational books about the science of Terry Pratchett's Discworld, in which wizards ponder the strange technology of Earth from a separate (magical) dimension.Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American LifeĬenter for Islamic Thought, Culture and PracticeĬenter for Latinx and Latin American Studies Stewart considers Flatland one of the earliest works of popular science, a genre he's been writing in for decades (his latest book came out in October). “Starting with Flatland's point of view,” he says, “you find a way in.” For instance, a crazy 4-D sphere (called a glome) might appear to us as expanding and contracting spherical cross-sections. That's the trick Stewart uses: By describing what it's like for a flat object to imagine a solid one, he can help us imagine an object in four dimensions. Though Square can't experience all three of the sphere's dimensions, he can see it in cross-section as a circle of various sizes. He can't conceive of depth, but his perspective expands when a sphere visits him from 3-D Spaceland. Square, a regular quadrilateral who lives on a 2-D plane.
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