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{{Short description|American mathematician}}{{about|the American mathematical physicist|the video-game programmer and creator of the video game “Alien Hominid“|The Behemoth}}{{Use mdy dates|date=October 2019}}

factoids

| birth_place = San Francisco, California, U.S.| death_date = | death_place = | residence = | citizenship = | nationality = American| fields = Mathematics, mathematical physics| workplaces = University of California, RiversidePrinceton University (A.B.>AB)Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD)| doctoral_advisor = Irving Segal| academic_advisors = | doctoral_students = Alissa Crans| notable_students = | thesis_title = Conformally Invariant Quantum Fields| thesis_year = 1986| thesis_url =library.mit.edu/item/000305075| known_for = | author_abbrev_bot = | author_abbrev_zoo = | influences = | influenced = Levi L. Conant Prize (2013){{citation>url=https://www.ams.org/notices/201304/rnoti-p484.pdfjournal=Notices of the AMSvolume=60pages=484–485}}| religion = | signature = | footnotes = | spouse = Lisa Raphals}}John Carlos Baez ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|b|aɪ|.|É›|z}};“John Baez Part 1” born June 12, 1961) is an American mathematical physicist and a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Riverside (UCR)www.facultydirectory.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/pub/public_individual.pl?faculty=193" title="archive.today/20120730014003www.facultydirectory.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/pub/public_individual.pl?faculty=193">UC Riverside, Department of Mathematics in Riverside, California. He has worked on spin foams in loop quantum gravity, applications of higher categories to physics, and applied category theory. Additionally, Baez is known on the World Wide Web as the author of the crackpot index.

Education

John C. Baez attended Princeton University where he graduated with an A.B. in mathematics in 1982; his senior thesis was titled “Recursivity in quantum mechanics”, under the supervision of John P. Burgess.BOOK, Baez, John C.,catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/4057230, Recursivity in quantum mechanics, 1982, Princeton University Department of Mathematics, Princeton, N.J., en, He earned his doctorate in 1986 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the direction of Irving Segal.{{MathGenealogy | id= 25152 }}

Career

Baez was a post-doctoral researcher at Yale University. Since 1989, he has been a faculty member at UC Riverside. From 2010 to 2012, he took a leave of absence to work at the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore and has since worked there in the summers.{{citation needed|date=June 2020}}

Research

His research includes work on spin foams in loop quantum gravity.Baez, John C. (1998), “Spin foam models”, Class. & Quantum Gravity 15, 1827–1858Top Cited Articles of All Time (2004 edition) in gr-qc He also worked on applications of higher categories to physics,John Baez Diary – January 2010, 1 January 2010John C. Baez and Aaron Lauda, (arxiv:0908.2469|A Prehistory of n-Categorical Physics), Deep Beauty, 13–128, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, (2011). such as the cobordism hypothesis. He has also dedicated many efforts towards applied category theory, including network theory.John Baez, Network theory.

Recognition

Baez won the 2013 Levi L. Conant Prize for his expository paper with John Huerta, “The algebra of grand unified theories”. He was named a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, in the 2022 class of fellows, “for contributions to higher category theory and mathematical physics, and for popularization of these subjects”.WEB,www.ams.org/cgi-bin/fellows/fellows_by_year.cgi, 2022 Class of Fellows of the AMS, American Mathematical Society, 2021-11-05,

Forums

Baez is the author of This Week’s Finds in Mathematical Physics,This Week’s Finds an irregular column on the internet featuring mathematical exposition and criticism. He started This Week’s Finds in 1993 for the Usenet community, and it now has a following in its new form, the blog Azimuth. This Week’s Finds anticipated the concept of a personal weblog.Lieven LeBruyn, The unbearable lightness of math-blogging, August 23, 2007 Azimuth also covers other topics that include combating climate change and various other environmental issues.WEB, The Azimuth Project,johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/about/, He is also co-founder of the {{anchor|n-category café}}n-Category Café (or n-Café), a group blog concerning higher category theory and its applications, as well as its philosophical repercussions. The founders of the blog are Baez, David Corfield and Urs Schreiber, and the list of blog authors has extended since. The n-Café community is associated with the nLab wiki and nForum forum, which now run independently of n-Café. It is hosted on The University of Texas at Austin’s official website.

Family

Baez’s uncle Albert Baez was a physicist and a co-inventor of the X-ray microscope; Albert interested him in physics as a child.WEB,math.ucr.edu/home/baez/interview1.html, Interview by David Morrison, May 24, 2009, Through Albert, he is cousins with singers Joan Baez and Mimi Fariña. John Baez is married to Lisa Raphals who is a professor of Chinese and comparative literature at UCR.February 17, 2007 – Lisa Raphals and I got married today! (Diary – February 2007)WEB,complitforlang.ucr.edu/people/faculty/bio.html?page=raphals.html, Lisa Raphals (UCR faculty page), May 3, 2014,complitforlang.ucr.edu/people/faculty/bio.html?page=raphals.html," title="web.archive.org/web/20140503072425complitforlang.ucr.edu/people/faculty/bio.html?page=raphals.html,">web.archive.org/web/20140503072425complitforlang.ucr.edu/people/faculty/bio.html?page=raphals.html, May 3, 2014, dead,

Selected publications

Papers

• JOURNAL, Baez, John C., Dolan, James, Higher‐dimensional algebra and topological quantum field theory, Journal of Mathematical Physics, 0022-2488, 36, 11, 6073–6105, 1995,pubs.aip.org/aip/jmp/article-abstract/36/11/6073/394001/Higher-dimensional-algebra-and-topological-quantum?redirectedFrom=fulltext, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD, 10.1063/1.531236, 1995JMP....36.6073B, 1355899, 14908618, q-alg/9503002,
• JOURNAL, Baez, John C., The Octonions, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 0273-0979, 39, 2, 145–205, 2002,math.ucr.edu/home/baez/octonions/, American Mathematical Society , Providence, RI, 10.1090/S0273-0979-01-00934-X, free, 1886087, 586512,
• JOURNAL, Baez, John C., Huerta, John, The algebra of grand unified theories, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc., 47, 2010, 3, 483–552, American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 10.1090/S0273-0979-10-01294-2, 0904.1556, free, 2009arXiv0904.1556B, 2651086, 2941843, 1196.81252,
• JOURNAL, Baez, John C., Hoffnung, Alexander E., Rogers, Christopher L., Categorified Symplectic Geometry and the Classical String, Communications in Mathematical Physics, 293, 701–725, 2010, 3, Springer Science+Business Media, Springer, 1432-0916, Berlin, 10.1007/s00220-009-0951-9, free, 2566161, 14358807, 1192.81208, 0808.0246,
• JOURNAL, Baez, John C., Huerta, John, G2 and the rolling ball, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, 1088-6850, 366, 10, 5257–5293, 2014,www.ams.org/journals/tran/2014-366-10/S0002-9947-2014-05977-1/, American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 10.1090/s0002-9947-2014-05977-1, free, 3240924, 50818244,
• JOURNAL, Baez, John C., From the Icosahedron to E8, London Math. Soc. Newsletter, 2516-3841, 476, 18–23, 2018, London, UK, 2017arXiv171206436B, 1712.06436, 3792329, 119151549, 1476.51020,

Books

• BOOK, Baez, John C., Segal, Irving E., Zhou, Zhengfang, An Introduction to Algebraic and Constructive Quantum Field Theory,press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691634104/introduction-to-algebraic-and-constructive-quantum-field-theory, Princeton University Press, Princeton Series in Physics, Princeton, NJ, 1052-8083, 47, 1992, 978-1-4008-6250-4, 889252663, 1178936,
• BOOK, Baez, John C., Knots and Quantum Gravity,global.oup.com/academic/product/knots-and-quantum-gravity-9780198534907?lang=de&cc=cn, Oxford Lecture Series in Mathematics and its Applications, 2059-9854, 1, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994, 978-0198534907, 30509964,
• BOOK, Baez, John C., Muniain, Javier P., Gauge fields, knots and gravity,www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/2324t=aboutBook, World Scientific, World Scientific Publishing Co., Inc., Series on Knots and Everything, 4, 0219-9769, River Edge, NJ, 1994, 10.1142/2324, 978-9810220341, 30779834, 1313910,
• BOOK, Baez, John C., May, J. Peter, Towards Higher Categories,link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4419-1524-5, The IMA Volumes in Mathematics and its Applications, 0940-6573, 157, Springer Science+Business Media, Springer-Verlag, New York, NY, 2009, 10.1007/978-1-4419-1524-5, 978-1441915238, 778311627, 2664168,
• BOOK, Baez, John C., Baratin, Aristide, Laurent, Freidel, Derek, Wise, Infinite-Dimensional Representations of 2-Groups,www.ams.org/books/memo/1032/, Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society, 1032, American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 2012, 978-0-8218-7284-0, 5581307110, 0065-9266,
• BOOK, Baez, John C, Biamonte, Jacob D., Quantum Techniques for Stochastic Mechanics,www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/10623t=aboutBook, World Scientific, World Scientific Press, Singapore, 2018, 10.1142/10623, 1209.3632, 978-9813226937, 119650940, 1027138118,

References

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External links

• Baez’s home page at UCR’s official website (ucr.edu)
• Azimuth blog by Baez
• The n-Category Café
• Home page in nLab

Essays

• edge.org/q2008/q08_5.htmlbaez" title="web.archive.org/web/20150302015053edge.org/q2008/q08_5.htmlbaez">“Should I be thinking about quantum gravity?”, essay by Baez at The World Question Center

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