92-Year-Old Topologist Joan Birman Found a New Apprentice—and a New Chapter
lukaszkaiser · x · 2026-09-08
A New York Times feature on Joan Birman, the 92-year-old Columbia topologist who thought her major discoveries were behind her—until a 2019 email from a high school girl who had just read her first real proof led to an unlikely mentorship. Lukasz Kaiser shared it as "a beautiful article on what math is beyond just results," noting that some AI-generated proofs are beautiful too.
More from AGI Musings
- Veteran dev: I last wrote code by hand in January 2026 and I'm never going back — facontidavide · 2026-09-08
- Interactive art piece 'Via Negativa' dissolves claims about inner experience — RileyRalmuto · 2026-09-08
- Quant researcher's take on AI and jobs: solve the dirty engineering problems — IgorCarron · 2026-09-08
- Tao Flags Major Break Toward Navier-Stokes Blowup, Formalized in Lean via Autoformalization Agents — peterjliu · 2026-09-08
- Stanford's Rishi Bommasani Slams Frontier AI Labs for Treating Research Math as a Benchmark — RishiBommasani · 2026-09-08
- Superintelligence by 2050: a pros/cons list for a world of AGI and a billion robots — mickeyxfriedman · 2026-09-08