ipzoisscience

I.P. Zois science page

"ΑΕΙ Ο ΘΕΟΣ Ο ΜΕΓΑΣ ΓΕΩΜΕΤΡΕΙ"

(this phrase is arguably attributed to Plato; it is a mnemonic rule for π = 3.14159...)

NOTES

Introduction to K-Theory (https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0Bz7NuSZ5Bn
6POThiZDYwNzktZGE3Ni00OWZlLW
EyZTMt
ZmU2YjE0MjdjNzdk&hl=en), by I.P. Zois (in Greek, pdf file, 110 pages). Contains 18 Lectures on K-Theory: 6 lectures on Topological K-Theory, 6 Lectures on Analytic K-Theory (K-Homology) and 6 lectures on Higher Algebraic K-Theory.

Differentiable Manifolds, by I.P. Zois (in Greek, pdf file, 115 pages).
Geometry of Curves and Surfaces, by I.P. Zois (in Greek, pdf file, 230 pages).
Projective Geometry, by I.P. Zois (in Greek, pdf file, 160 pages).
Quantum Mechanics, by I.P. Zois (in Greek, pdf file, 96 pages).
Special Theory of Relativity, by I.P. Zois (in Greek, pdf file, 88 pages).
BRST Cohomology and String Field Theory, by I.P. Zois (in English, pdf file, 40 pages).
Quantum Cryptography by I. P. Zois (in Greek, word doc file, 81 pages).
Online mathematics notes from Cambridge University (click on Lecture Notes and Examples Sheets). For more notes, check the links at the bottom of the relevant page.
Online notes from MIT (various topics, including mathematics).
Online mathematics notes from Oxford University.
Listen to lectures from Oxford University on various subjects (pdf notes also provided in most cases).
Free online library.
Free mathematics notes from Professor A. Hatcher (Cornell University); in particular, his algebraic topology book is highly recommended.

Recreation:

Here is a popular science article I wrote on Kurt Godel (relation between theology and mathematical logic, in English, pdf file, 6 pages); this is the Greek translation (12 pages, contains some additional comments on Orthodox Christian Theology).

Moreover this is a popular science article I wrote on the relation between theology and cosmology (in English, pdf file, 7 pages); this is the Greek translation (11 pages, contains some additional remarks).

Read Harold Pinter's 2005 Nobel Prize Lecture (in English).

This is an article from the European Mathematical Society Newsletter on mathematical research in Europe and the US.

If cars were not one of the major pollutants and if I were a millionaire, I would love to buy a Bugatti Veyron (although TGV in France can travel even faster!)

I have written a number of comments on various topics at the 4 wheels (4T) magazine forum-not necessarily related to cars-a selection of which can be found here (in Greek).

Nuclear fusion is perhaps the answer to the energy problem of mankind and ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in France) is the world's largest project. ITER is the successor of JET in Oxfordshire. For a different approach using lasers visit HIPER or see an an interesting article from the BBC.

Do you want to win 1 million USD?

The Boy Surface is an immersion of the real projective plane in 3-dim Euclidean space and it is an interesting surface (non-orientable).

Surface Topology (and the Boy Surface in particular)has many interesting and perhaps unexpected non-mathematical applications, ranging from occupant car protection at crash tests (go to MFO and click onto Boy Surface on the left), to psychology and psychoanalysis (Lacanian Topology); see also the Seminars of Jacques Lacan and the notion of Sinthome.

Read the news in Ancient Greek and Latin from St Andrew's University. Here is an interesting article on the language controversy in modern Greece.

Think globally, act locally; watch/read the world news from the BBC. Have a look at the BBC Science. Some of my favourite newspapers are the Financial Times http://www.ft.com/home/europe , Le Monde Diplomatique http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/ (there is an English edition as well http://mondediplo.com/ ) and Spiegel http://www.spiegel.de/international/

Some interesting facts about pi (π): If you divide the real length of a river by the length of the straight line joining source to mouth you find pi, see a very good essay here.

Despite of being clearly unethical (not only accoding to the christian faith but also according to all other major religions), of arguable scientific value and not essential since there are other techniques for creating stem cells like pluripotency which avoid all moral issues, unfortunately the British Parliament voted against a ban on hybrid human animal embryos...

Have a look at an interesting scientific review article to see why Charles Darwin was wrong on his idea for a tree of life to explain the evolutionary relationships between different species; this tree of life idea was absolutely central to Darwin's thinking, equal in importance to natural selection (his explanation was evolution by natural selection).

Have a look at the letter sent recently to the US president Barack Obama by more than 350 classical scholars from around the world (including professors of antiquity from the Universities of Berkeley, Cambridge, Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, Stanford etc), concerning the history of Macedonia.

Antifono is an interesting greek site on science, religion, philosophy and arts. You may find this book interesting http://www.scribd.com/full/36788291?access_key=key-2nkk0d9yy19qvb2tpz9x

Here is an interesting article from the greek press.

Here is an interesting talk on the Sunday of Orthodoxy.

"ΑΓΕΩΜΕΤΡΗΤΟΣ ΜΗ ΕΙΣΙΤΩ", (motto of the AMS).

Visit my facebook profile at

http://www.facebook.com/ioannis.p.zois?ref=fs

This is the personal web-page of Dr Ioannis P. Zois

Brief CV:

Born in Veria, Macedonia, Greece, on 24-11-1968.

Current Position: Professor of Mathematics and Physics at various University Departments (public & private) in Athens, Greece (including Deree College of the American College of Greece) (part time) and Centre of Research, Templates and Testing of the Public Electricity Corporation of Greece .

First Degree: Physics (specialization: Theoretical Physics), National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.

Graduate Studies: Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics (CASM, Part III of the Mathematical Tripos, essentially an M.Sc), Cambridge University, UK.

Doctorate Degree: D.Phil, Mathematics, Oxford University, UK. (Admitted to the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy on 9th May 1997).

Awards: I received various awards and scholarships from the European Union (Marie Curie Post-doctoral Research Fellowships), EPSRC (UK), the A.S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, the A.G. Leventis Foundation and IKY (Greece).

Academic Carrer: I held a number of research and teaching positions  at various research institutions and universities including Sir Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (Cambridge University), Mathematical Institute (Oxford University), the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (IHES) in Paris, the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach in Germany (see photo here), CERN (theory division) http://public.web.cern.ch/public/ etc.

Research interests: geometry (in particular, noncommutative geometry, low dimensional manifolds, surgery on manifolds, gauge theory, differential and algebraic topology, global analysis, K-Theory, Index Theory) and applications in theoretical physics.

I have been a student and collaborator of, among others, Alain Connes  (Fields Medal-1982), Simon K. Donaldson (Fields Medal-1986),   Stephen Hawking, Sir Roger Penrose, Daniel Quillen (Fields Medal-1978) and Sheung-Tsun Tsou.

I have published a number of research articles, most of which can be found at the arXiv (mainly, but not only, at the hep-th) or at its mirror at CERN (Switzerland), the world's largest particle physics laboratory and where the web was born!

I am a reviewer in various scientific journals.

I am an ordinary elected member of the London Mathematical Society, of the  European Mathematical Society and of the Societe Mathematique de France.

I am also a life member of the Oxford Union Debating Society.

I did my military service (compulsory for greek citizens) mainly at the Army Research and Technology Centre. My specialization was cryptography (classical and quantum).

My Mathematics Genealogy: I was a student of (among others), Alain Connes (student of Jacques Dixmier), Simon Donaldson (student of Sir Michael Atiyah-Fields Medal 1966- and Nigel Hitchin-also a student of M.F. Atiyah; M.F. Atiyah was a student of William V. D. Hodge), Stephen Hawking (student of Dennis Sciama who was a student of Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac-Nobel Laureate in Physics 1933), Sir Roger Penrose (student of W.V.D Hodge and  Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac), Dan Quillen (student of Raoul Bott) and Sheung-Tsun Tsou (student of Jacques Dixmier).

One can see my D.Phil (doctoral) thesis online here (by courtesy of the Bodleian Library, Oxford).

One can have a look at a non-technical description of my most important published scientific articles here (in Greek, original research, physics oriented description). For a mathematically oriented description one can see here.

One can have a look at a recent seminar I gave at the Physics Department of the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens.

Contacts: You can contact me via one of the following e-mail addresses:

izois@yahoo.gr

ipzois@gmail.com

izois@acg.edu

i.zois@exeter.oxon.org

Various academic related issues:

Here you can find a useful link to perhaps the most reliable world university ranking list of the top 100 (and top 500) universities by the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES). You can also have a look at the Guardian's point of view (UK universities only). For research at UK universities you can also have a look at the Research Assessment Exercise.

See the 2010 World University Ranking http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2010/results

See a relevant article from the greek press http://www.tanea.gr/default.asp?pid=2&ct=2&artid=4593216

Here you can find Nobel Laureates by University Affiliation.

Read about the Nobel Prize in Physics 2007 awarded to scientists who discoverd giant magnetoresistance in electromagnetism and they contributed to the develpoment of computer hard discs and various other applications (like the ipod etc).

Read about the Nobel Prize in Physics 2008 awarded to the scientists who discovered spontaneous symmetry breaking in subatomic particles and predicted the third generation of quarks. This phenomenon is relevant to the experiments planned on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN for the discovery of the Higgs boson (find more about the Higg's mechanism).

Since 1958, IHES has given to the world 7 Fields Medalists in mathematics (Thom, Grothendieck, Deligne, Connes, Bourgain, Kontsevich, Lafforgue), probably more than any other research institute on earth for the same period. (Some other counts raise this number to 13 including Schwartz, Serre, Lions, Yoccoz, Werner & Villani-one of the 2010 recipients). Some of them are currently at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, USA. Here you can find some information about the Fields Medal (this is the most prestigeous international award on mathematics, awarded every 4 years by the International Mathematical Union to mathematicians not over 40 years of age; it is roughly considered as the analogue of the Nobel Prize in mathematics since there was no mention of mathematics in Alfred Nobel's will).

The Abel Prize 2009 in mathematics has been awarded to Mikhail Gromov of IHES.

A state of matter called spin ice was discovered in Oxford which has many similarities with magnetic monopoles.

The state of entanglement has been created in silicon for the first time in Oxford. The feat could lead to quantum computers made like ordinary computer chips! See http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19998-first-silicon-entanglement-will-aid-quantum-computing.html

Greek-Cypriot Christopher A. Pissarides, Professor of Economics at the LSE shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economics. You may read one of his articles on the greek financial crisis (in greek) here http://news.kathimerini.gr/4dcgi/_w_articles_economy_100048_12/10/2010_418274

Student Issues (Fall Semester 2010)

Differential Geomtry I (Curves & Surfaces)
Differential Geometry II (Differentiable Manifolds)
Projective and Algebraic Geometry
Physics I (PY 1000) (download the course outline).
Physics II (PY 1101) (download the course outline). Here is the dissertation topic list. You may see an example of a very good short essay on the Ekpyrotic Universe.
Applied Calculus (MA 1105) (download the course outline here).
Finite Mathematics (MA 1001) (download the course outline).
Have a look at some practical advice on how to study maths.
Have a look at Simon Singh's programmes for the BBC on numbers.

home

NOTES

Recreation:

Various academic related issues:

Student Issues (Fall Semester 2010)