Robert Langlands - The Abel Prize interview 2018

[@sgs9418]

Langlands is wonderfully down to earth and straightforward, healthily dismissive of the grandiosity to which mathematicians and physicists are prone. The interviewers (who are nice people) are straining throughout to talk about transcendental beauty and sublime moments of inspiration etc, while Langlands just says yeah I decided to think about that and it kinda worked, but it's just my job and there are more important things in life, and i don't know what the heck the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture is (you're talking about), and, yeah I didn't really do any math until high school. Of the math superstars, he belongs to a very small subgroup who are brilliant without intending to be, for whom it is a surprise to find themself so acclaimed, for whom the math happened within them almost without realising. That is what is transcendental and sublime.

[@Krypticfunk]

You nailed it!

[@saulberardo5826]

Beautiful comment! The idea sounds still better if the text is read detached from any moral judgements about the attitude of the other mathematicians and physicists

[@adrias818]

This interview is the best in this series. I like how Langlands are being completely honest about his feeling towards various question posted by the interview holder.

[@saulberardo5826]

How come do I find listening to this so beautiful?

[@gaulindidier5995]

Can't believe I'm the only person to comment on this video!! Robert is so underrated, He's maybe the most important living mathematician alive today!

[@abelchern2497]

Yes,langlands conjecture is the most important thing.

[@lachenmann]

I've never understood why we hear so much about Terry Tao and so little about Robert Langlands.

[@kriterer]

​@@lachenmann The amount we hear about Terry Tao seems crazy until you think about how half of modern research has been affected by a man who is only 46

[@dankurth4232]

@@lachenmann Terence Tao‘s contributions are mainly of highly ‚technical‘ and highly precise and specific nature in very many different fields of mathematics whereas Langlands‘ is ‚just‘ deep, very deep

[@kutay8421]

@@dankurth4232 Then can we say Terrence is a skillful engineer and an architect for building bridges and cathedrals to defeat gravity and centuries whereas Roberts is the man who tries to understand how Gravity and Time works ?

[@just42tube]

It seems that Robert Langland has a clear understanding that the term mathematical beauty is not a very useful label since beauty already has so many uses and brings associations which aren't really helpful in the mathematical context. But just as the interviewers seemed to be stuck in using the term, so are many other people. It's difficult or impossible to get rid of such labels when they have been commonly used. What can be done is to agree that mathematical beauty and more generic beauty should be understood to have significantly different meanings.

[@1.2.3.4..5]

All these interviews are so nice thanks for putting on yt ^_^

[@gogigaga1677]

46:13 GREATS REFERENCING GREATS GROTHENDIECK AND LANGLAND THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT MATHEMATICIANS OF THE LAST 50 YEARS

[@pedropfaff8906]

This is all very mysterious in terms of Jung's " Syncronicity" For indeed " lang" is long in Dutch so that the word "Langland" literally means landbridge in Dutch. Very mysterious.

[@1.2.3.4..5]

This is not true Langland means long land in Dutch

[@pedropfaff8906]

@@1.2.3.4..5 I agree but does a long stretch of land across a waterway not mean a a landbridge.The classical example is ofcource the Longland across the Red Sea that joins Africa to Asia.

[@lm58142]

The interviewers' seeming inability to move on from the idea of beauty in mathematics despite Langlands' polite protestations reminded me of the hilarious Elton John interview by Rowan Atkinson.

[@erhert]

Tebrikler profesör. Sizi çok seviyoruz.

[@mre_physvids]

11:45: “My conjecture is I have an unusually high IQ.” This conjecture has been proven.

[@franciscoreyes7370]

@ham burges The body of his life's work

[@McRingil]

@ham burges but it's a correlate of mathematical ability

[@McRingil]

@ham burges so you`re at least capable of inferring he`s at the tale of a distribution

[@kutay8421]

@ham burges Nope you can still be very lazy with an enormous IQ. The difference is in the nature of problems you try to tackle. I believe what by he meant by *conjecture* is that the problems he was facing in his imagination were not bogus.

[@edwardjones2202]

@ham burges If he doesn't have an unusually high IQ then IQ tests don't test intelligence

[@shoopinc]

Legend in the game

[@chevasit]

Good 👍

[@odysseus231]

"I don't know what the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture is" That is why we love Robert L. 😂

[@bernardofitzpatrick5403]

Wow - Prof Langlands wld agree with Sabine Hosenfelder on the topic of beauty in mathematics. He is a legend - love him. 🤙🏽

[@tfob06]

Unintentional ASMR 😴

[@beimein3244]

hard inteviewee lol

[@rome8726]

Damn he is old. 87

[@shubhadadimble3972]

As jung said we are bound to be spritual after ceratin 60 sadly the science has not left any gap for spritual so people try to find way into it without voilating science..

[@lonnybulldozer8426]

Dude on the right can't open his eyes to see the beauty.

[@michaelaristidou2605]

He didn't answer anything! 😆 In philosophy of math he gets an F.