Gems in the forest

The internet is a big place, and there are lots of hidden treasures out there. This page lists some that I have stumbled across.

  • Steve Mitchell's "How I became a mathematician". (It is nice that University of Washington has kept this link active.)
  • Celebratio Mathematica is an open access electronic publication aimed at assembling biographical and related information about mathematicians. There are tributes, interviews, picture galleries, and a wide range of other material.
  • The Clay Mathematics Institute has an interesting "Collections page" that includes, among other things, 35 years of Quillen's mathematical notebooks together with some tributes written after his passing.
  • The Simons foundation has a collection of video interviews with mathematicians and scientists called Science Lives. Some of the interviews are quite touching. Be warned that the web interface on this site is a little clunky: to select a chapter in a video it seems one clicks on the title of the chapter and waits patiently for a few seconds for anything to happen.
  • Yale Open Courses. Probably many leading universities now offer open courses like this, but here is one such collection (mostly focused on humanities courses).
  • Dave Barry's substack