Results like Joan Birman’s at 99 strike us so powerfully not only because of her age, but because they remind us that mathematical research is not a means to some external end. It is, in itself, a way of inhabiting the world with greater clarity. Read Greg Egan’s thread. #HistMath 🧪 #mathematics
Greg EganWhile the Fields Medal celebrates the under-40s, the mathematician Joan Birman has, at the age of 99, solved a major open problem in representations of the Braid groups, a topic she has worked on for more than 60 years.