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New paper with Josh Lam, about which I'm really excited! I want to try to briefly explain what the point is in this thread.
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Daniel Litt
30.5K posts
Daniel Litt
@littmath
Assistant professor (of mathematics) at the University of Toronto. "Tireless math ronin." Algebraic geometry, number theory, etc. He/him.
Toronto, Ontario Katılım Ağustos 2010
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Daniel Litt retweetledi
This is rather a beautiful example of modern math with very precise and profound statements (not to mention the great use Litt made of it for proving that certain Taylor expansions have rational coefficients) that look like total gibberish to those outside (and many inside) math.
Daniel Litt@littmath
Faltings wins the Abel prize! Obviously his work is immensely influential; in my own research I've used his results on p-adic Hodge theory quite a bit. Aside from his proof of the Mordell conjecture, this is my favorite result of his:
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Daniel Litt retweetledi
@littmath I was once at a talk in Münster and he asked a highly technical question at the end of a highly technical talk. The speaker said X in the audience might be the best person to answer. X hesitantly began “well, by a theorem of Faltings…”
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Faltings wins the Abel prize! Obviously his work is immensely influential; in my own research I've used his results on p-adic Hodge theory quite a bit. Aside from his proof of the Mordell conjecture, this is my favorite result of his:
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It's one of the main inputs to the results discussed here: x.com/littmath/statu…
Daniel Litt@littmath
I want to explain in down-to-earth terms what this paper is about, since it ultimately boils down to what I think are some really concrete and fundamental questions. 1/n
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Daniel Litt retweetledi
We congratulate Gerd Faltings as the 2026 Abel Prize laureate! 🎉 He recives the Abel Prize "for introducing powerful tools in arithmetic geometry and resolving long-standing diophantine conjectures of Mordell and Lang".
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Daniel Litt retweetledi
The list of speakers for the conference is growing, and I am so excited to hear these talks! Join us!
@littmath will be speaking!
and
Amanda Folsom (Amherst College)
and
Ravi Ramakrishna (Cornell University)
and
Joseph Silverman (Brown University)
and more!!
Alvaro Lozano-Robledo@mathandcobb
**Please share widely!** Announcing CTNT 2026: the Connecticut Summer School in Number Theory, and Research Conference! June 1-7, at UConn. Applications (for the summer school and/or conference) are now open thru our website: ctnt-summer.math.uconn.edu
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@roydanroy Yes, this is an option. Probably it would be more like 5 pages to make it readable, which means unfortunately it will take at least a few weeks to get to it.
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Sometimes you solve an "open problem" and the solution is just not very interesting (e.g. it would be cool if a conjecture was true, since that would imply something else important, but it turns out not to be true).
Usually this doesn't result in a publication, but rather just an email to the person who originated the problem. This is in part because it takes a lot of work to write something publication-quality (not to mention making work for other people who have to referee it), and arguably that's not worth it for results of limited interest. On the other hand, it would be good to have a way to disseminate such solutions so that other people don't waste effort on them.
Worth keeping this in mind when looking at AI-generated solutions to open problems too. Not all of the examples of such thus far have this nature, but many of them do.
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@heee1950 In fact Foundation was part of what got me interested in math. But I tried to reread it recently and found it pretty rough.
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Without commenting on its correctness, this argument goes back at least to Plato’s Republic.
Will 🦥 Menaker@willmenaker
lol
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Uh to be clear Plato was not specifically advocating for Tom Swift Boy Scientist.
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@littmath @NoahJSnyder @samth @isaiah_bb a postdoc position that is bound by the prohibition on faculty-student romantic relationships
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Professors shouldn’t be hooking up with students, even when they aren’t teaching them in particular, but it’s hard for me to get super exercised about a 26 year old assistant professor (grad student assistant?) kissing a 20 year old undergrad a few times?
Ryan Grim@ryangrim
Wachspress has now published an essay about her allegation. She says that she was a junior when she was Biss’ student, in roughly 2004 when he’d have been about 26. He waited until the course was over and asked her out. They “made out” a few times, she says, and then he broke it off, saying he shouldn’t date a student.
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@NoahJSnyder @SashaGusevPosts @samth @isaiah_bb I agree that it’s accurate to call this position a postdoc.
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@SashaGusevPosts @samth @littmath @isaiah_bb Yes, they're temporary non-renewable 3-year faculty positions that usually (especially 20 years ago) go to someone who just got their PhD. This is a very typical usage of the word "postdoc" in math.
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@littmath @SashaGusevPosts @samth @isaiah_bb Found proof. He wrote an oped (against doing math online) in the Notices in Nov. 2004. The bio reads: "Daniel Biss is a Dickson Instructor at the University of Chicago and a Research Fellow at the Clay Mathematics Institute."
Dickson Instructor is UChicago for postdoc.
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@SashaGusevPosts @NoahJSnyder @samth @isaiah_bb That would also be compatible with going on the market in 2005 (right after the 3-year review). Probably best to wait until more info comes out.
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@NoahJSnyder @littmath @samth @isaiah_bb Could be, but it's not what was previously reported (well before this scandal broke):
evanstonroundtable.com/2021/11/30/ive…
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@zenahitz My view (as someone who somewhat frequently does read original math texts) is that there are real benefits to doing so but they’re typically around learning modes of thought, and there are often better ways to learn the material itself.
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This is a misunderstanding. First of all: STEM is pre-professional, not liberal. I am arguing for science as a liberal art, ie something a layperson should know. It is not "hero worship". It is borne of long experience watching beginners learn science from orig texts!
Will Kinney@WKCosmo
There is a fundamental disconnect between STEM and humanities/philosophy in that STEM by its nature does not value the wisdom of the ancients in any special way. We understand a lot more about Einstein's theories than Einstein did, because we have had a century to find deeper, simpler, and clearer ways to think about the physics. Contemporary scientists by and large are not confused about the things that Einstein was confused about, we are confused about new things, that Einstein barely imagined.
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@samth @SashaGusevPosts @isaiah_bb Hmm looks like a Clay Fellowship in 2002 so could actually have been a postdoc.
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@lthlnkso @willowwynnn @nitbean @isaiah_bb I think faculty who date their students are skeezy and that doing so speaks to poor character. I see no reason to moderate that general view in this case.
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I agree it's a good norm, and it was probably a poor choice for the guy to date a former student. But he was also 26 years old at the time and tried to correct.
You did say it's "skeezy and speaks to poor character", so it seems inapt to say you don't have a strong opinion about this case.
Finally, I think it's obviously a political attack to post this on election eve. Biss made a bad choice 20 years ago in a personal relationship. I don't think that should be a factor today.
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@SashaGusevPosts @isaiah_bb Can’t find a CV but if so, agreed. UChicago math often does not tenure APs, which could be how they are justifying the recategorization to themselves.
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@littmath @isaiah_bb Whereas if he was truly an assistant professor and is using the pro forma "instructor" transition phase to make it seem like he was a student rather than a member of the faculty, that speaks to poor moral character and a willingness to actively mislead.
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