American mathematician
This article is about the American mathematical physicist. For the video-game programmer and creator of the video game "Alien Hominid", see
The Behemoth .
John Carlos Baez (;
[2] born June 12, 1961) is an American
mathematical physicist and a professor of
mathematics at the
University of California, Riverside (UCR)
[3] in
Riverside , California. He has worked on
spin foams in
loop quantum gravity , applications of
higher categories to physics, and
applied category theory . Additionally, Baez is known on the
World Wide Web as the author of the
crackpot index .
Education
John C. Baez attended
Princeton University where he graduated with an A.B. in mathematics in 1982; his senior thesis was titled "Recursivity in quantum mechanics", under the supervision of
John P. Burgess .
[4]
He earned his doctorate in 1986 from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the direction of
Irving Segal .
[5]
Career
Baez was a
post-doctoral researcher at
Yale University . Since 1989, he has been a faculty member at
UC Riverside . From 2010 to 2012, he took a leave of absence to work at the
Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore and has since worked there in the summers.[
citation needed ]
Research
His research includes work on
spin foams in
loop quantum gravity .
[6]
[7] He also worked on applications of
higher categories to physics,
[8]
[9] such as the
cobordism hypothesis . He has also dedicated many efforts towards
applied category theory , including network theory.
[10]
Recognition
Baez won the 2013
Levi L. Conant Prize for his expository paper with John Huerta, "The algebra of grand unified theories".
[1] He was named a Fellow of the
American Mathematical Society , in the 2022 class of fellows, "for contributions to higher category theory and mathematical physics, and for popularization of these subjects".
[11]
Forums
Baez is the author of This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics ,
[12] an irregular column on the internet featuring mathematical exposition and criticism. He started This Week's Finds in 1993 for the
Usenet community, and it now has a following in its new form, the blog Azimuth . This Week's Finds anticipated the concept of a personal
weblog .
[13] Azimuth also covers other topics that include
combating climate change and various other
environmental issues.
[14]
He is also co-founder of the n -Category Café (or n -Café ), a
group blog concerning
higher category theory and its applications, as well as its philosophical repercussions. The founders of the blog are Baez,
David Corfield and
Urs Schreiber , and the list of blog authors has extended since. The n -Café community is associated with the
n Lab wiki and n Forum forum, which now run independently of n -Café. It is hosted on
The University of Texas at Austin 's official website.
Family
Baez's uncle
Albert Baez was a physicist and a co-inventor of the
X-ray microscope ; Albert interested him in physics as a child.
[15] Through Albert, he is cousins with singers
Joan Baez and
Mimi Fariña .
John Baez is married to
Lisa Raphals who is a professor of Chinese and
comparative literature at
UCR .
[16]
[17]
Selected publications
Papers
Baez, John C.; Dolan, James (1995).
"Higher‐dimensional algebra and topological quantum field theory" .
Journal of Mathematical Physics . 36 (11). College Park, MD:
American Institute of Physics : 6073–6105.
arXiv :
q-alg/9503002 .
Bibcode :
1995JMP....36.6073B .
doi :
10.1063/1.531236 .
ISSN
0022-2488 .
MR
1355899 .
S2CID
14908618 .
Baez, John C. (2002).
"The Octonions" .
Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society . 39 (2). Providence, RI:
American Mathematical Society : 145–205.
doi :
10.1090/S0273-0979-01-00934-X .
ISSN
0273-0979 .
MR
1886087 .
S2CID
586512 .
Baez, John C.; Huerta, John (2010).
"The algebra of grand unified theories" . Bull. Amer. Math. Soc . 47 (3). Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society: 483–552.
arXiv :
0904.1556 .
Bibcode :
2009arXiv0904.1556B .
doi :
10.1090/S0273-0979-10-01294-2 .
MR
2651086 .
S2CID
2941843 .
Zbl
1196.81252 .
Baez, John C.; Hoffnung, Alexander E.; Rogers, Christopher L. (2010).
"Categorified Symplectic Geometry and the Classical String" .
Communications in Mathematical Physics . 293 (3). Berlin:
Springer : 701–725.
arXiv :
0808.0246 .
doi :
10.1007/s00220-009-0951-9 .
ISSN
1432-0916 .
MR
2566161 .
S2CID
14358807 .
Zbl
1192.81208 .
Baez, John C.; Huerta, John (2014).
"G2 and the rolling ball" .
Transactions of the American Mathematical Society . 366 (10). Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society: 5257–5293.
doi :
10.1090/s0002-9947-2014-05977-1 .
ISSN
1088-6850 .
MR
3240924 .
S2CID
50818244 .
Baez, John C. (2018). "From the Icosahedron to E8 ". London Math. Soc. Newsletter . 476 . London, UK: 18–23.
arXiv :
1712.06436 .
Bibcode :
2017arXiv171206436B .
ISSN
2516-3841 .
MR
3792329 .
S2CID
119151549 .
Zbl
1476.51020 .
Books
Baez, John C.; Segal, Irving E.; Zhou, Zhengfang (1992).
An Introduction to Algebraic and Constructive Quantum Field Theory . Princeton Series in Physics. Vol. 47. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press .
ISBN
978-1-4008-6250-4 .
ISSN
1052-8083 .
MR
1178936 .
OCLC
889252663 .
Baez, John C., ed. (1994).
Knots and Quantum Gravity . Oxford Lecture Series in Mathematics and its Applications. Vol. 1. Oxford:
Oxford University Press .
ISBN
978-0198534907 .
ISSN
2059-9854 .
OCLC
30509964 .
Baez, John C.; Muniain, Javier P. (1994).
Gauge fields, knots and gravity . Series on Knots and Everything. Vol. 4. River Edge, NJ:
World Scientific Publishing Co., Inc.
doi :
10.1142/2324 .
ISBN
978-9810220341 .
ISSN
0219-9769 .
MR
1313910 .
OCLC
30779834 .
Baez, John C.; May, J. Peter, eds. (2009).
Towards Higher Categories . The IMA Volumes in Mathematics and its Applications. Vol. 157. New York, NY:
Springer-Verlag .
doi :
10.1007/978-1-4419-1524-5 .
ISBN
978-1441915238 .
ISSN
0940-6573 .
MR
2664168 .
OCLC
778311627 .
Baez, John C.; Baratin, Aristide; Laurent, Freidel; Derek, Wise (2012).
Infinite-Dimensional Representations of 2-Groups .
Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society . Vol. 1032. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society.
ISBN
978-0-8218-7284-0 .
ISSN
0065-9266 .
OCLC
5581307110 .
Baez, John C; Biamonte, Jacob D. (2018).
Quantum Techniques for Stochastic Mechanics . Singapore:
World Scientific Press .
arXiv :
1209.3632 .
doi :
10.1142/10623 .
ISBN
978-9813226937 .
OCLC
1027138118 .
S2CID
119650940 .
References
^
a
b
"2013 Conant Prize" (PDF) ,
Notices of the AMS , 60 (4): 484–485, April 2013
^
"John Baez Part 1"
^
UC Riverside, Department of Mathematics
^ Baez, John C. (1982).
Recursivity in quantum mechanics . Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Department of Mathematics.
^
John C. Baez at the
Mathematics Genealogy Project
^ Baez, John C. (1998), "Spin foam models", Class. & Quantum Gravity 15, 1827–1858
^
Top Cited Articles of All Time (2004 edition) in gr-qc
^
John Baez Diary – January 2010 , 1 January 2010
^ John C. Baez and
Aaron Lauda ,
A Prehistory of n-Categorical Physics , Deep Beauty, 13–128, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, (2011).
^
John Baez, Network theory.
^
"2022 Class of Fellows of the AMS" . American Mathematical Society. Retrieved November 5, 2021 .
^
This Week's Finds
^ Lieven LeBruyn,
The unbearable lightness of math-blogging , August 23, 2007
^
"The Azimuth Project" .
^
"Interview by David Morrison" . Retrieved May 24, 2009 .
^
February 17, 2007 – Lisa Raphals and I got married today! (Diary – February 2007)
^
"Lisa Raphals (UCR faculty page)" . Archived from
the original on May 3, 2014. Retrieved May 3, 2014 .
External links
Essays
International National Academics Other