Interviews of famous modern mathematicians

Question

I was wondering, are there any good collections of interviews of famous modern mathematicians? It can be text interviews, or audio or video recordings.

I am not sure what exactly I mean by "modern". It just feels that mathematics in the last, say, 20 years is different than before in the sense that it is getting more and more abstract, and different mathematical fields become further away from each other. So it seems that now more people are trying to find concrete (or at least more concrete) applications of advanced theories, and also to relate different mathematical subjects, other than to solve hard problems within a field. (This may be completely wrong, this is just an impression I have now ). Therefore, it seems that modern mathematicians have a different approach to math, and it is very interesting to read about their vision of math in interviews.

I have read some very nice interviews by Manin, Kontsevich, Voevodsky, Arnold and some others, but I have found them accidentally. So if you have links to some websites collecting interviews with modern mathematicians, I would really appreciate that!

Thank you very much! I hope this question is appropriate here!

Edit: I have found this very nice collection of interviews, collected by E.Dynkin.

Answer 1

Something can be found here: http://celebratio.org/ (in particular there is a very nice interview with Michael Freedman)

Here there is an interview with S. Smale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmpPUjOeMGI

Here's one with M. Atiyah: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dToui7IVwBY

with T. Tao: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGe-nGZLENU

Moreover on Youtube you can find plenty interviews with C. Villani.

Answer 2

The Clay Mathematics Institute interviewed Terence Tao in this report.

Answer 3

This is a book and very interesting: Mathematical People: Profiles and Interviews by Albers & Alexanderson. http://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-People-Interviews-Donald-Albers/dp/1568813406.

That besides Notices of the AMS has a series of interviews conducted by Christian Skau and another mathematician whose name I don't recall. You can check the Notices site.

Answer 4

An interview with J.P. Serre. I found it to be very nice.

Answer 5

An interview with Steve Stogarts: http://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/math-as-artistry-an-interview-with-steve-strogatz-mathematician/

Answer 6

The Simons Foundation has a number of lengthy high-quality interview videos in its Science Lives section. Most of these mathematicians did their main work more than 20 years ago. Their influence on modern mathematics surely is significant.

Current listing:

• Alfred Aho
• Michael Atiyah
• Sydney Brenner
• Egbert Brieskorn
• Alexandre Chorin
• John Conway
• Pierre Deligne
• Michael Freedman
• Phillip Griffiths
• Friedrich Hirzebruch
• Richard Karp
• Robion Kirby
• Peter Lax
• László Lovász
• Robert D. MacPherson
• Yuri Manin
• John McCarthy
• Dusa McDuff
• John W. Milnor
• Cathleen Morawetz
• John Nash
• Louis Nirenberg
• Paul Sally
• Isadore Singer
• James D. Watson
• Margaret Wright
• Chen-Ning Yang

Answer 7

Samuel Hansen has an ongoing audio interview series with mathematicians called Strongly Connected Components - currently at 55 interviews.

A few years ago I did a series of short audio interviews with mathematicians called Travels in a Mathematical World.

Tony Mann did a short series of interviews with mathematicians and historians of mathematics called Being a Professional Mathematician.

Answer 8

AMS notices interviews:
https://www.google.com/search?q=interview+site:www.ams.org/notices
Asia Pacific Mathematics Newletters interviews:
https://www.google.com/search?q=interview+www.asiapacific-mathnews.com/
Clay institute interviews
https://www.google.com/search?q=interview+www.claymath.org

Answer 9

Even though this is a book of essays rather than interviews, I found it quite interesting: "Discrete Thoughts: Essays on Mathematics, Science and Philosophy" by Mark Kac, Gian-Carlo Rota, Jacob T. Schwartz

An entertaining counterpoint is "Indiscrete Thoughts" by Gian-Carlo Rota.

Answer 10

Interview with You tuber Richard Borcherds (Fields Medalist)

Interview Date Mar $17, 2021$

video link