Robert Langlands - The Abel Prize interview 2018

00:17 The esthetics and beauty of mathematics
05:13 Creative moments and revelations: are numbers beautiful or are they satisficing
07:55 Langlands background from British Columbia and “lack of academic ambition”
10:30 Langlands on why he chose mathematics after all and science interest
14:58 Choosing his PhD topic at Yale University
16:29 What led to the Langlands programme
20:00 Langlands on Bochner: “like a foster-father”
23:13 The trace formula
27:10 Conversation with Selberg and his time at IAS
30:16 The work on Eisenstein series and the constant term
35:13 Reductive groups
38:18 Connection with Artin Conjecture and letter to Andre Weill
42:40 Functoriality: What the Langlands programme is all about
51:35 The importance of continuing this L-function
54:35 Wiles being inspired by Langlands
58:20 Fundamental Lemma
1:04:18 The importance of trace formula for functoriality
1:10:03 Langlands on being a theory builder
Interview in written. Notices of the American Mathematical Society:
www.ams.org/journals/notices/...
Robert Langlands is interviewed by the two mathematicians Christian Skau and Bjørn Ian Dundas.
Produced by Yvonne Pettrém and Arve Nordland / UniMedia

[@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.

[@pascaljosiah6866]

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 ?

[@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

[@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.

[@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.

[@shoopinc]

Legend in the game

[@bernardofitzpatrick5403]

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

[@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

[@tfob06]

Unintentional ASMR 😴

[@beimein3244]

hard inteviewee lol

[@odysseus231]

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

[@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.