The Chalk for Math Professors: Hagoromo Fulltouch, by Alex Ronan for the current issue of New York magazine, part of the Status Survey on various items for professionals.

The smooth texture flows so easily across the chalkboard like a fountain pen … One puts up mathematics on the chalkboard as if tracing out an idea in the air.

Meanwhile, I happened to be at a conference at the Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Kyoto last week, and I gave my talk using the chalkboard and the plentiful supply of Hagoromo chalk provided there.

Related MathOverflow post.

I was quoted briefly in Mathematicians think like machines for perfect proofs, New Scientist, by Jacob Aron, June 26, 2013.  (Actually, my quote there is a little out of context, as my remark there was referring only to research in set theory, where anyone would view the switch to another foundation as a distraction.)

I was recently interviewed by Richard Marshall at 3:AM Magazine, which was a lot of fun. You can see that his piece starts out, however, rather over-the-top…

3:AM MAGAZINE

playing infinite chess

Joel David Hamkins interviewed by Richard Marshall.

Joel David Hamkins is a maths/logic hipster, melting the logic/maths hive mind with ideas that stalk the same wild territory as Frege, Tarski, Godel, Turing and Cantor. He thinks we all can go there and that we all should. He gives tips about the Moebius strip to six year olds and plays around with his sons homework. He has discovered all sorts of wonders involving supertasks, infinite-time Turing machines, black-hole computations, the mathematics of the uncountable, the lost melody phenomenon of infintary computability (which really should be the name of a band), set theory and multiverses, infinite utilitarianism, and infinite chess. He’s also thinking about whether we really have an absolute notion of the finite and doubts if any of this is brain melting, which is just a testimony to his modesty. He also thinks that although maths is open to all he thinks mathematicians could use more metaphors and silly terminology to get their ideas across better than they do. All in all, this is the grooviest of the hard core maths/logic groovsters. Bodacious!

→ continue to the rest of the interview

The interview is now available at Marshall’s site 3:16, along with the full collection of his interviews.