Math Spouses Are at Forefront of Research at Microsoft

April 23, 2007

Mathematical physicists Jennifer Tour Chayes and Christian Borgs, experts in graph theory, abandoned academia for the lure of the unknown a decade ago. They accepted an offer to set up the 20-person Theory Group of Microsoft Research, in Redmond, Wash., which encompasses full-time researchers, postdoctoral students, and academics on sabbatical. The creative environment afforded this group is a dream come true: It echoes that of once-renowned Bell Laboratories of Murray Hill, N.J.

The resulting "way-out stuff" and "research for the day after tomorrow," as Chayes called it in a recent Scientific American article, from a who's who of mathematicans and computer scientists, included a proof that certain random two-dimensional objects, when distorted, retain the same statistical properties, a characteristic called conformal invariance. Wendelin Werner won a Fields medal for his share in this work.

Researcher Henry Cohn, along with postdoctoral candidate Abhinav Kumar, published critical work on "miracle dimensions," describing how densely spheres can be packed together in eight and 24 dimensions, which promises improved error-correction codes.

For their part, Chayes—the 2007 MathFest Hedrick Lecturer—and Borgs have been able to further their interest in phase transitions, which considers the mathematical equivalent of sudden discontinuities in a physical state; for instance, when water freezes. And their other area of mathematical interest—graph theory—can be used to model the Web's intricacies. "All of a sudden," Chayes notes, "the stuff we are doing has become relevant."

Source: Scientific American, March 2007