# …and so it begins.

Let me introduce myself: my name is Ben Webster. I’m a newly minted Ph.D. in mathematics from UC Berkeley, who will be doing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study this year. Since this will put me across the continent from most of the graduate students I’ve chatted with math about over the past 5 years or so (who are slowly being scattered to the four winds as is), I thought it would be nice to carry on our conversations on a blog instead.

Thus, I’m pleased to introduce “Secret Blogging Seminar,” a group blog meant to be something of an extension of the wonderful student seminars we’ve had at Berkeley, hopefully with a bit more input from the outside world.

So, what will we be talking about? Well, math, for starters (with occasional infringements from the rest of the world). My personal research interests sprawl somewhat messily along the the borders between representation theory, algebraic geometry, and knot theory, and different contributors will lean more to one side or another, but I expect the interface between these subjects to be the center of gravity of this blog. I say this not as a restriction, but rather to let you, our valued reader, know what to expect.

Which is not to say that I really know what to expect of this blog. Give me a few weeks and it may be clearer.

## 6 thoughts on “…and so it begins.”

1. Okay, I’m in. To give a similar introduction to the rest of the world — I’m David Speyer. I got my PhD in Mathematics at Berkeley in 2005 and am now a Clay Research Fellow. I am currently at Michigan but will be in Boston soon. I work in algebraic geometry and combinatorics; I also enjoy thinking about number theory and I have recently started trying to teach myself physics.

2. ajtolland says:

Me, too. And since everyone seems to be doing it —
I’m A.J. Tolland. I’m a final year Mathematics graduate student at UC-Berkeley, and I work mostly in mathematical physics and algebraic geometry. I’m also getting more and more interested in operator algebra these days.

3. Geoff says:

I’m Geoff Ehrman, and (rather depressingly… for me at least) I’m still an undergrad at U. of Akron majoring in (Theoretical) Math. Hopefully, I’ll go on to a grad. school to be named later.
As a side note, since my favorite LaTeX code is $e^{i\pi} + 1 = 0$, I suppose that means its the only formulaic I’m allowed to write. Or am I misinterpretting Using LaTeX in WordPress… :D

4. anton says:

I am Anton, a grad student at UC Berkeley. I don’t know how to make a post (presumably I shouldn’t be able to post unless I get onto some list), so I’m introducing myself in this comment. I like algebraic geometry and representation theory.
Right now I’m in Salt Lake City learning about derived categories. Many magical things that only work in special cases work in general in derived categories (e.g. many functors which don’t have adjoints aquire adjoints when you derive them). I’d like for a pair of adjoint functors stay adjoint when you derive them (e.g. $f^*$ is left adjoint to $f_*$, so I’d like to deduce the (true) fact that $Lf^*$ is left adjoint to $Rf_*$). Can somebody prove this or convince me that it is false?

5. anton says:

The stars in that comment should alternate f^*, f_*, Lf^*, Rf_*, but apparently my html tags don’t work right.

6. Anton — I took the liberty of fixing up your html. The secret is to use WordPress’ $latex f^* $ format. It seems to cope pretty well.