West Coast Number Theory 2 (This subtitle is about how I think its funny to

[bxidntdrmer]

Today was good. I was less shy today.

Brillhart: Highlight of the morning: John Brillhart sat down next to me at the end of breakfast. He didn't seem to remember me. After a day we're getting along pretty famously.

I mention that I took his linear algebra course. His response? And you're still around doing math?!? He says "hi" to Santiago and

Comments

no justice!

[bxidntdrmer]

The subtitle was too long. Stupid lj not recognizing my
tags...

So Doctor Z (i.e. canada) and I decided to start calling "rational points" justice. That's what the subtitle was supposed to say.

[easwaran]

Wow, Hilbert's 10th is something recitable on the spot now? I would have assumed it would still be impenetrable magic. I remember going to Matiyasevitch's talk at the recursion theory seminar last year, and was quite surprised when he said the key was proving Davis' conjecture that every recursively enumerable set was the set of somethings of a polynomial of some form. But I don't even remember what Putnam's trick was supposed to be, much less what Robinson and Matiyasevitch did. (Putnam, of course, I know much more about through his philosophical work.)

The prime-spitting polynomial isn't something crazy like it takes on a value for certain inputs iff that value is prime, is it? That shouldn't be possible.

Should some of these crazy mathematician stories be friends-only? (Not that anyone in authority would read this, but who knows what the internet can find.)