Alex Townsend
Mathematician
3
MENTIONS
3
EPISODES
3
PODCASTS
Search complete. 3 mentions across 3 episodes found for "Alex Townsend".
Oct 13, 2026
Steven StrogatzGUEST
Okay.
Steven StrogatzGUEST
It's a story that I heard while working on the book that you kindly mentioned that I'm working on with my coauthor Alex Townsend, in which we interviewed a woman named Regina Barzilay, who...
Steven StrogatzGUEST
Let's see.
Steven StrogatzGUEST
I think she would've been 40, 41.
Soren WheelerHOST
Also, Steve's new book, which hits on many of these issues rather presciently, is called Big Math.
Soren WheelerHOST
He wrote it together with his colleague, another mathematician at Cornell, Alex Townsend.
Soren WheelerHOST
It's set to be released on November 10th, but you can pre-order it wherever you do your pre-ordering.
Soren WheelerHOST
Now, if you happen to actually like hearing a little bit of math, uh, or me and Steve talking about math or whatever, we actually had an episode from a couple years ago called The Middle of Everything Everywhere, in which Steve and I try to figure out in real time what the average-sized thing in the universe is.
speaker_0HOST
OpenAI says its advisory group on math and AI recommended releasing the papers without waiting for full formal proofs.
speaker_0HOST
Alex Townsend, a mathematician at Cornell, expects more errors.
speaker_0HOST
He says OpenAI should have released the Lean verified papers first and then asked for help checking the rest.
speaker_0HOST
Andrew Sutherland of MIT calls the quick withdrawal responsible, but he told Retraction Watch that it will take a lot more than that to earn back the trust they have lost.