Follow
Mathematicians welcome computer-assisted proof in ‘grand unification’ theory
Proof-assistant software handles an abstract concept at the cutting edge of research, revealing a bigger role for software in mathematics .
…
A grand unification
Around 2018, Scholze and Clausen began to realize that the conventional approach to the concept of topology led to incompatibilities between these three mathematical universes — geometry, functional analysis and p-adic numbers — but that alternative foundations could bridge those gaps. Many results in each of those fields seem to have analogues in the others, even though they apparently deal with completely different concepts. But once topology is defined in the ‘correct’ way, the analogies between the theories are revealed to be instances of the same ‘condensed mathematics’, the two researchers proposed. “It is some kind of grand unification” of the three fields, Clausen says.
…
