We interviewed maths prof Edward Frenkel in Faraday's old rooms on 12 Dec. The video's just out! Highlights: 29:52 Why self-knowledge is key to avoiding malevolent AI 35:06 Will AI make mathematicians redundant? 56:41 The remarkable effectiveness of physics in maths www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMTX...

In one of the weirder "charity visits" I've ever done, we cracked out some maths last week! Bonus point/s if you know what's going on in these calcs* Notice that the mathmos there are technically "charity workers", a dopey phrase sometimes used by journos to cover the vast diversity of this sector…

Seventy years after John von Neumann’s essay “Can We Survive Technology?”, the questions he posed feel more urgent than ever. On Thursday 4 December, I'm chairing an expert panel discussion at the Hungarian Embassy in London on what that essay means to us now. You're invited!

Folks! Amazon.com has done it again! Kindle edition of 'The Man from the Future' on sale for less than $5! That's 75% off. Want to find out what the fuss over John von Neumann is really about and what he actually did? You can now for $4.80! www.amazon.com/dp/B098TYZN6...

The director of the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences and I interviewed one of the most restless and original talents in science last week⏤theoretical physicist and innovator Stephen Wolfram! Watch out for the rapidfire round! www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SD9...

A video of the whole event is now on YouTube! youtube.com/watch?v=8SD9...

Stephen Wolfram is such a legend, I wasn't sure what to expect! But he was gracious and charming, as well as totally fascinating. He even enjoyed my mean rapidfire questions, which he had 90 secs each to answer! "So Stephen, Is there a God?" Will post video of the event soon! x.com/London_Inst/...

www.economist.com/science-and-... come work with me

I’ve removed paywalls from two substack posts on recently unearthed evidence of von Neumann’s contributions to Gödel’s Incompleteness theorems. This work was published after ‘The Man from the Future’ came out, so wasn’t in the book. Links below 👇🏾

Many thanks to Marc Andreesen for name-checking 'The Man from the Future' in a Hermitix podcast episode, resurfaced by a16z! Listen here podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/a...

My feature for @nature.com on the impact of the proof of the geometric Langlands conjecture is out today! David Ben-Zvi: It gives us the strongest evidence yet that something we’ve believed in for decades is true. Now we can finally ask: what does it really mean? www.nature.com/articles/d41...

"A portrait as contradictory and volatile as the man himself—a mind in constant motion, a life lived inside the blast radius of 20th-century science." "Definitive." My review of @nevalalee.bsky.social's excellent Luis Alvarez biography 'Collisions' for @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

“There’s proof by induction, proof by contradiction, and then proof by intimidation,” Prof. He says. “If you say something with enough authority, people just get scared. I think o4-mini has mastered proof by intimidation.” www.scientificamerican.com/article/insi...

Fantastic package of articles on the impact of AI on science and mathematics including this one, on mathematical beauty in the age of AI. What will mathematicians do once AI can come up with conjectures and find proofs? 1/ quantamagazine.org/mathematical...

What’s the smallest number of pieces that an equilateral triangle can be cut into and still be rearranged into a square? It’s taken over 120 years to prove the answer… www.scientificamerican.com/article/math...

NEW: LibGen contains millions of pirated books and research papers, built over nearly two decades. From court documents, we know that Meta torrented a version of it to build its AI. Today, @theatlantic.com presents an analysis of the data set by @alexreisner.bsky.social. Search through it yourself:

Stephen Wolfram has a blogpost about a half-century of innovation—as seen through the lens of engineered structures (like clocks, logic gates etc) in Conway's Game of Life! Cellular automata rock! writings.stephenwolfram.com/2025/03/what...

Available now to stream! @bbcradio4.bsky.social looks at the thinking of scientists involved or decisively not involved in the Manhattan project-including Johnny von Neumann! Great to see von Neumann in his rightful place alongside Oppenheimer, Einstein et al. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

For #PiDay the talk at the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences is of observing 9.2 seconds of silence at 1500 hours today. The question is can any of us shut up for that long?

33-year old mathematician Hong Wang has proved the century-old Kakeya conjecture in in 3D, with collaborator Joshua Zahl! The problem is rooted in the old question: what's the smallest area that an infinitely thin needle can sweep out if it has to be turned to point in every possible direction?

📈 New post from me about Labour’s growth problem 📈 I argue that there isn’t a clear ‘theory of growth’ that Starmer and Reeves share. So there is a risk of a Frankenstein’s monster of incommensurate ideas. 🧵 benansell.substack.com/p/grasping-f...

Anyone who relished @ananyo.bsky.social 's superb book about John von Neumann should read Alec Nevala-Lee's COLLISIONS, about Luis Alvarez. Coming in June from @wwnorton.bsky.social "Outstanding!"-Richard Rhodes, author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb wwnorton.com/books/978132...

Just finished a wonderful tour of John von Neumann's life & ideas, "The Man from the Future." Can't recommend it highly enough! Author @ananyo.bsky.social Bhattacharya is a tremendous tour guide. JVN's contributions were staggering. Hard to comprehend what our world would be like without his ideas.

I've written up my thoughts on who did NOT invent the modern computer for my substack, 'Confections & Reputations', part of a series of posts on the true genealogy of the stored-program devices we nearly alluse today! Free for now, link ⤵️

Is this the year you make a career change? I've gone from lab scientist to science communicator to freelance writer to agency founder, and told the story of my journey to @ananyo.bsky.social earlier this year: sciwri.club/archives/13336

Whenever I have pressed the case that John von Neumann should be considered the father of the modern stored-program computer ie the one that nearly everyone uses and carries around in their pockets, I've been met with hurt rebukes. So let's lay out von Neumann's claim properly...

You should of course read @ananyo.bsky.social’s “The Man from the Future,” which is one of the best scientific biographies I’ve read.

Beautiful Roma! What luck that ‘L'uomo venuto dal futuro’ has been so well received in Italy! What fun it was to talk about John von Neumann with Paolo Giordano at the Rome book fair and be interviewed by Rai Italia!

Eventually they will be using books written by AI to train AI, and then use the books written by this new “improved” AI. The McGonagallisation of language.

A "Più libri più liberi" @ananyo.bsky.social ha dialogato con Paolo Giordano raccontando la straordinaria vita di John von Neumann ne "L'uomo venuto dal futuro".

Domani sabato 7 dicembre, due incontri a Più libri più liberi: • "L'uomo venuto dal futuro": @ananyo.bsky.social in dialogo con Paolo Giordano, ore 12. • "Narcotopia": Patrick Winn in dialogo con Roberto Saviano, ore 14.45.

I'm HUGELY looking forward to chatting about Johnny von Neumann with physicist and acclaimed writer Paolo Giordano this weekend. Maybe you're one of the million or so people who read 'The Solitude of Prime Numbers'? If you're in Rome, join us! If not, the event will also be streamed plpl.it/eventi/

Highly recommend! Great Christmas gift Btw, I’m still annoyed von Nuemann wasn’t included in Nolan’s Oppenheimer. I think a scene depicting an annoyed Einstein complaining about von Neumann blasting music in the office was a huge miss

This was an excellent read bsky.app/profile/anan...

Less than four weeks to Xmas Day! This year, why not give your nearest and dearest the gift of unrivaled genius? 😜 'The Man from the Future' is available in a dozen languages. AND those crazy folk at Amazon Italia have cut the price of the Kindle edition to €3.99! 😅 www.amazon.it/Luomo-venuto...

Birkbeck, University of London, where Roger Penrose did his Nobel Prize-winning work in the '60s and London's only specialist provider of evening higher education, has closed its undergraduate maths degree... www.bbk.ac.uk/news/nobel-p... www.linkedin.com/posts/campai...

Reflections on ‘The MANIAC’ by Benjamín Labatut 👇 picandovoyenglish.wordpress.com/2024/02/15/r... #AI #Singularity Do also read the book 'The Man from the Future' by @ananyo.bsky.social to gain a more nuanced perspective on the figure of Von Neumann

“Problems as complex as ‘P versus NP are vastly beyond where we are today in terms of even knowing how to start. But I can imagine that, maybe in around three years, we might be on course for something like that.” —David Silver, Google DeepMind www.scientificamerican.com/article/math...

"A successful meritocracy will value people who see their lives as a sacred mission." The second half of this piece in @theatlantic.bsky.social is super good, drawing on various lines of evidence to support the idea that selecting purely for IQ isn't meritocratic. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

I’m sorry to have to say due to unforeseeable circumstances Patchen has had to pull out of promotion events next week including this one. If you’ve registered you’ll hear from LIMS next week.

Friends! On Thursday, 14 Nov, join me and @patchenbarss.bsky.social from 6pm at LIMS to launch his excellent biography of Roger Penrose! Entry is FREE but you MUST register by emailing [email protected] Copies will be on sale and Xmas is nearly upon us! Deets here: lims.ac.uk/event/the-im...

The second-most read feature in the September issue of Nautilus was a quasi-philosophical look at why physics seems to inspire interesting mathematics. I find that heartening. Physicists! Mathematicians! Everyone else! Take a gander... nautil.us/why-physics-...

The 'operator algebras' John von Neumann invented 100 years ago are helping probe physics beyond Einstein's general relativity! Johnny would have been pleased but, I suspect, not surprised. Truly 'The Man from the Future'! www.quantamagazine.org/if-the-unive...

My new piece! "Why should physics—rooted in making sense of real things in the world—provide such good leads for solving some of the toughest problems in mathematics, which deals with intangible stuff, like functions and equations?" Enjoy! nautil.us/why-physics-...