Professor Noga Alon (Shaw Prize 2022) discusses his career in Mathematics which has led to over 600 publications so far. Interview with University of Oxford mathematician Dr Tom Crawford recorded at the Hong Kong Laureate Forum 2023.
Noga begins with his recollection of being awarded the Shaw Prize in Mathematics, and the recent award ceremony in Hong Kong. He then explains how the interdisciplinary nature of his work has led to over 600 publications, including work in Biology, Economics and Neuroscience. Noga also discusses how he decides which questions are worth his time, and some of the great unsolved problems he has thought about in the past (eg. Collatz, Goldbach, Riemann, P vs NP). The second part of the video looks at some of his work in more detail, including his work on ‘necklace splitting’ and the Borsuk-Ulam Theorem which he covers in a recent Numberhpile video. Finally, Noga shares a story from his childhood involving the Eurovision Song Contest which convinced him of the objectivity of the subject of Mathematics.
