John C. Baez

{{about|the American mathematical physicist|the video-game programmer and creator of the video game "Alien Hominid"|The Behemoth}}

{{Infobox scientist

| name = John C. Baez

| image = John Baez, physicist (2009).jpg

| caption = Baez in August 2009

| birth_name = John Carlos Baez

| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1961|6|12|mf=yes}}

| birth_place = San Francisco, California, U.S.

| death_date =

| death_place =

| residence =

| fields = Mathematics, mathematical physics

| workplaces = University of California, Riverside

| education = Princeton University (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 = http://library.mit.edu/item/000305075

| known_for =

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| influences =

| influenced =

| awards = Levi L. Conant Prize (2013){{citation|url=https://www.ams.org/notices/201304/rnoti-p484.pdf|title=2013 Conant Prize|journal=Notices of the AMS|date=April 2013|volume=60|issue=4|pages=484–485}}

| signature =

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| spouse = Lisa Raphals

}}

John Carlos Baez ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|b|aɪ|.|ɛ|z}} {{respell|BY|ez}};[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEhAMnQb9p4 "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)[https://archive.today/20120730014003/http://www.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.{{Cite book|last=Baez|first=John C.|url=https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/4057230|title=Recursivity in quantum mechanics|date=1982|publisher=Princeton University Department of Mathematics|location=Princeton, N.J.|language=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 was a visiting professor at the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore and continued working there in the summers until at least 2016.{{Cite web |last=Baez |first=John |date=2016-03-15 |title=Interview with a Mathematical Physicist: John Baez Part 1 |url=https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/interview-mathematical-physicist-john-baez-part-1/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240221050400/https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/interview-mathematical-physicist-john-baez-part-1/ |archive-date=2024-02-21 |access-date=2025-01-26 |website=Physics Forums Insights |language=en-US}}{{Cite web |last=O'Neil |first=Kathryn M |date=2023-08-03 |title=Mathematician Aims to Keep It Simple |url=https://alum.mit.edu/slice/mathematician-aims-keep-it-simple |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241007035950/https://alum.mit.edu/slice/mathematician-aims-keep-it-simple |archive-date=2024-10-07 |access-date=2025-01-26 |website=alum.mit.edu |language=en}}

= Research =

His research includes work on spin foams in loop quantum gravity.Baez, John C. (1998), "Spin foam models", Class. & Quantum Gravity 15, 1827–1858[http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2004/eprints/to_gr-qc_alltime.shtml Top Cited Articles of All Time (2004 edition) in gr-qc] He also worked on applications of higher categories to physics,[http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/diary/january_2010.html John Baez Diary – January 2010], 1 January 2010John C. Baez and Aaron Lauda, 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[http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/networks/ John Baez, Network theory.] and has published over 105 papers.{{Cite web |title=John Baez AMS {{!}} Department of Mathematics |url=https://mathdept.ucr.edu/john-baez-ams |access-date=2025-04-01 |website=mathdept.ucr.edu |language=en}}

= 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".{{cite web|url=https://www.ams.org/cgi-bin/fellows/fellows_by_year.cgi|title=2022 Class of Fellows of the AMS|publisher=American Mathematical Society|access-date=2021-11-05}}

= Forums =

Baez is the author of This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics,[http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/TWF.html 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, [http://www.neverendingbooks.org/the-unbearable-lightness-of-math-blogging The unbearable lightness of math-blogging], August 23, 2007 Baez creates blog posts about topics or questions he wants to understand more through his column publishings.{{Cite web |last=Muehlhauser |first=Luke |date=2014-02-22 |title=John Baez on Research Tactics |url=https://intelligence.org/2014/02/21/john-baez-on-research-tactics/ |access-date=2025-02-10 |website=Machine Intelligence Research Institute |language=en-US}} Azimuth also covers other topics that include combating climate change and various other environmental issues.{{cite web|title=The Azimuth Project|date=March 24, 2010 |url=https://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.{{cite web | url=http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/interview1.html | title= Interview by David Morrison | access-date = 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 from ancient Greece at UCR.[http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/diary/february_2007.html February 17, 2007 – Lisa Raphals and I got married today! (Diary – February 2007)]{{Cite web |url=http://complitforlang.ucr.edu/people/faculty/bio.html?page=raphals.html |title=Lisa Raphals (UCR faculty page) |access-date=May 3, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140503072425/http://complitforlang.ucr.edu/people/faculty/bio.html?page=raphals.html |archive-date=May 3, 2014 |url-status=dead }}{{Cite book |last=Raphals |first=Lisa |title=Knowing Words: Wisdom and Cunning in the Classical Traditions of China and Greece |date=1992 |publisher=Cornell University Press |isbn=978-0-8014-2619-3 |series=Myth and Poetics Ser |location=Ithaca}}

Selected publications

= Papers =

{{Cite journal | last1 = Baez | first1 = John C. | last2 = Dolan | first2 = James | title = Higher-dimensional algebra and topological quantum field theory | journal = Journal of Mathematical Physics | issn = 0022-2488 | volume = 36 | issue = 11 | pages = 6073–6105 | year = 1995 | url = https://pubs.aip.org/aip/jmp/article-abstract/36/11/6073/394001/Higher-dimensional-algebra-and-topological-quantum?redirectedFrom=fulltext | publisher = American Institute of Physics | location = College Park, MD | doi = 10.1063/1.531236 | bibcode = 1995JMP....36.6073B | mr = 1355899 | s2cid = 14908618 | arxiv = q-alg/9503002 }}
{{Cite journal | last1 = Baez | first1 = John C. | title = The Octonions | journal = Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society | issn = 0273-0979 | volume = 39 | issue = 2 | pages = 145–205 | year = 2002 | url = http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/octonions/ | publisher = American Mathematical Society | location = Providence, RI | doi = 10.1090/S0273-0979-01-00934-X | doi-access = free | mr = 1886087| s2cid = 586512 }}
{{Cite journal | last1 = Baez | first1 = John C. | last2 = Huerta | first2 = John | title = The algebra of grand unified theories | journal = Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. | volume = 47 | year = 2010 | issue = 3 | pages = 483–552 | publisher = American Mathematical Society | location = Providence, RI | doi = 10.1090/S0273-0979-10-01294-2 | arxiv = 0904.1556 | doi-access = free | bibcode = 2009arXiv0904.1556B | mr = 2651086 | s2cid = 2941843 | zbl = 1196.81252 }}
{{Cite journal | last1 = Baez | first1 = John C. | last2 = Hoffnung | first2 = Alexander E. | last3 = Rogers | first3 = Christopher L. | title = Categorified Symplectic Geometry and the Classical String | journal = Communications in Mathematical Physics | volume = 293 | pages = 701–725 | year = 2010 | issue = 3 | url = | publisher = Springer| issn = 1432-0916 | location = Berlin | doi = 10.1007/s00220-009-0951-9 | doi-access = free | mr = 2566161 | s2cid = 14358807 | zbl = 1192.81208 | arxiv = 0808.0246 | bibcode = 2010CMaPh.293..701B }}
{{Cite journal | last1 = Baez | first1 = John C. | last2 = Huerta | first2 = John | title = G₂ and the rolling ball | journal = Transactions of the American Mathematical Society | issn = 1088-6850 | volume = 366 | issue = 10 | pages = 5257–5293 | year = 2014 | url = https://www.ams.org/journals/tran/2014-366-10/S0002-9947-2014-05977-1/ | publisher = American Mathematical Society |location = Providence, RI | doi=10.1090/s0002-9947-2014-05977-1 | doi-access = free | mr = 3240924 | s2cid = 50818244 }}
{{Cite journal | last = Baez | first = John C. | title = From the Icosahedron to E₈ | journal = London Math. Soc. Newsletter | issn = 2516-3841 | volume = 476 | pages = 18–23 | year = 2018 | location = London, UK | bibcode = 2017arXiv171206436B | arxiv = 1712.06436 | mr = 3792329 | s2cid = 119151549 | zbl = 1476.51020 }}

= Books =

{{Cite book | last1 = Baez | first1 = John C. | last2 = Segal | first2 = Irving E. | last3 = Zhou | first3 = Zhengfang | title = An Introduction to Algebraic and Constructive Quantum Field Theory | url = https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691634104/introduction-to-algebraic-and-constructive-quantum-field-theory | publisher = Princeton University Press | series = Princeton Series in Physics | location = Princeton, NJ | issn = 1052-8083 | volume = 47 | year = 1992 | isbn = 978-1-4008-6250-4 | oclc = 889252663 | mr = 1178936}}
{{Cite book | editor-last = Baez | editor-first = John C. | title= Knots and Quantum Gravity | url = https://global.oup.com/academic/product/knots-and-quantum-gravity-9780198534907?lang=de&cc=cn | series = Oxford Lecture Series in Mathematics and its Applications | issn = 2059-9854 | volume = 1 | publisher = Oxford University Press | location = Oxford | year = 1994 | isbn = 978-0198534907 | oclc = 30509964 }}
{{Cite book | last1 = Baez | first1 = John C. | last2 = Muniain | first2 = Javier P. | title = Gauge fields, knots and gravity | url = https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/2324#t=aboutBook | publisher = World Scientific Publishing Co., Inc. | series = Series on Knots and Everything | volume = 4 | issn = 0219-9769 | location = River Edge, NJ | year = 1994 | doi = 10.1142/2324 | isbn = 978-9810220341 | oclc = 30779834 | mr = 1313910 }}
{{Cite book | editor-last1 = Baez| editor-first1 = John C. | editor-last2 = May | editor-first2 = J. Peter | title = Towards Higher Categories | url = https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4419-1524-5 | series = The IMA Volumes in Mathematics and its Applications | issn = 0940-6573 | volume = 157 | publisher = Springer-Verlag | location = New York, NY | year = 2009 | doi = 10.1007/978-1-4419-1524-5 | isbn = 978-1441915238 | oclc = 778311627 | mr = 2664168 }}
{{Cite book | last1 = Baez |first1 = John C. | last2 = Baratin | first2 = Aristide | last3 = Laurent |first3 = Freidel | last4 = Derek | first4 = Wise | title = Infinite-Dimensional Representations of 2-Groups | url = https://www.ams.org/books/memo/1032/ | series = Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society | volume = 1032 | publisher = American Mathematical Society | location = Providence, RI | year = 2012 | isbn = 978-0-8218-7284-0 | oclc = 5581307110 | issn = 0065-9266 }}
{{Cite book | last1 = Baez | first1 = John C | last2 = Biamonte | first2 = Jacob D. | title = Quantum Techniques for Stochastic Mechanics | url = https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/10623#t=aboutBook | publisher = World Scientific Press | location = Singapore | year = 2018 | doi = 10.1142/10623 | arxiv = 1209.3632 | isbn = 978-9813226937 | s2cid = 119650940 | oclc = 1027138118 }}

References

External links

[http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/ Baez's home page] at UCR's official website (ucr.edu)
[http://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/ Azimuth] blog by Baez
[http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/ The n-Category Café]
[http://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/John+Baez Home page] in nLab

= Essays =

[https://web.archive.org/web/20150302015053/http://edge.org/q2008/q08_5.html#baez "Should I be thinking about quantum gravity?"], essay by Baez at The World Question Center

Category:1961 births

Category:20th-century American mathematicians

Category:21st-century American mathematicians

Category:21st-century American physicists

Category:American bloggers

Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni

Category:Princeton University alumni

Category:Yale University fellows

Category:Usenet people

Category:Category theorists

Category:University of California, Riverside faculty

Category:Living people