John Carlos Baez (; born June 12, 1961) is an American

mathematical physicist Mathematical physics refers to the development of mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' defines the field as "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and the developmen ...

and a professor of mathematics at the

University of California, Riverside The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The main campus sits on in a suburban distr ...

(UCR) in Riverside, California. He has worked on

spin foam In physics, the topological structure of spinfoam or spin foam consists of two-dimensional faces representing a configuration required by functional integration to obtain a Feynman's path integral description of quantum gravity. These structur ...

s in loop quantum gravity, applications of higher categories to physics, and applied category theory. Baez is also the author of ''This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics'', an irregular column on the internet featuring mathematical exposition and criticism. He started ''This Week's Finds'' in 1993 for the

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...

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 A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

. Additionally, Baez is known on the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...

as the author of the

crackpot index Crackpot may refer to: * Crackpot, North Yorkshire, a village in the United Kingdom and home of Crackpot Cave * Crackpot Hall, a landmark ruin near Keld, North Yorkshire * a DC comics character, see Blasters (comics) * Crackpot (band), an Australi ...

Early life and education

Baez was born in San Francisco, California. He graduated with an A.B. in mathematics from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

in 1982 after completing a senior thesis, titled "Recursivity in quantum mechanics", under the supervision of John P. Burgess. In 1986, he graduated from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston ...

, with a Doctor of Philosophy under the direction of Irving Segal.

Career

Baez was a

post-doctoral researcher A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to pu ...

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

. Since 1989, he has been a faculty member at

UC Riverside The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. Th ...

. From 2010 to 2012, he took a leave of absence to work at the

Centre for Quantum Technologies The Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT) in Singapore is a Research Centre of Excellence hosted by the National University of Singapore. The Centre brings together physicists, computer scientists and engineers to do basic research on quantum phy ...

in Singapore and has since worked there in the summers. Baez's research includes work on

s in loop quantum gravity. He also worked on applications of higher categories to physics,John C. Baez and

Aaron Lauda According to Abrahamic religions, Aaron ''′aharon'', ar, هارون, Hārūn, Greek ( Septuagint): Ἀαρών; often called Aaron the priest ()., group="note" ( or ; ''’Ahărōn'') was a prophet, a high priest, and the elder brother ...

,
A Prehistory of n-Categorical Physics
', Deep Beauty, 13–128, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, (2011). such as the

cobordism hypothesis In mathematics, the cobordism hypothesis, due to John C. Baez and James Dolan, concerns the classification of extended topological quantum field theories (TQFTs). In 2008, Jacob Lurie outlined a proof of the cobordism hypothesis, though the deta ...

. He has also dedicated many efforts towards applied category theory, including network theory.

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 The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

, in the 2022 class of fellows, "for contributions to higher category theory and mathematical physics, and for popularization of these subjects".

Blogs

Baez runs the blog "Azimuth", where he writes about a variety of topics ranging from ''This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics'' to the current focus, combating climate change and various other

environmental A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...

issues. Baez is also co-founder of the ''n''-Category Café (or ''n''-Café), a group blog concerning

higher category theory In mathematics, higher category theory is the part of category theory at a ''higher order'', which means that some equalities are replaced by explicit arrows in order to be able to explicitly study the structure behind those equalities. Higher cate ...

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 ''n''Lab wiki and ''n''Forum forum, which now run independently of ''n''-Café. It is hosted on

The University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

's official website.

Family

His uncle Albert Baez was a physicist, a co-inventor of the

X-ray microscope An X-ray microscope uses electromagnetic radiation in the soft X-ray band to produce magnified images of objects. Since X-rays penetrate most objects, there is no need to specially prepare them for X-ray microscopy observations. Unlike visible li ...

, and father of singer and progressive activist

Joan Baez Joan Chandos Baez (; born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more ...

. Albert interested him in physics as a child. John Baez is married to Lisa Raphals who is a professor of Chinese and

comparative literature Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across linguistic, national, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role similar to that of the study ...

at UCR.

Selected publications

Papers

Books

* ''An Introduction to Algebraic and Constructive Quantum Field Theory'', with Irving Segal and Zhengfang Zhou, Princeton University Press, 1992. * ''Knots and Quantum Gravity'', editor, Oxford University Press, 1994. * ''Gauge Fields, Knots, and Gravity'', with Javier Muniain, World Scientific Press, 1994. * ''Towards Higher Categories'', editor, with Peter May, Springer, Berlin, 2009. * ''Infinite-Dimensional Representations of 2-Groups'', with Aristide Baratin, Laurent Freidel and Derek Wise, Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society 1032, Providence, Rhode Island, 2012. * ''Quantum Techniques for Stochastic Mechanics'', with Jacob Biamonte, World Scientific Press, Singapore, 2018.

Notes

References

* * * * Baez, John C. (1996) Spin networks in gauge theory, '' Advances in Mathematics'' 117, 253–272 * Baez, John C. (1998) Quantum geometry & black hole entropy, w. A. Ashtekar, A. Corichi & K. Krasnov, '' Phys. Rev. Lett.'' 80, 904–907.

External links

Baez's home page
at UCR's official website (ucr.edu)
Azimuth
blog by Baez
The ''n''-Category Café

Home page
in ''n''Lab

Essays

essay by Baez at The World Question Center {{DEFAULTSORT:Baez, John C. 1961 births 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians 21st-century American physicists American bloggers Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni Princeton University alumni Yale University fellows Usenet people Category theorists University of California, Riverside faculty Living people Loop quantum gravity researchers American relativity theorists Higher category theory American people of Mexican descent Science bloggers Mathematicians from California People from San Francisco Hispanic and Latino American scientists Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Hispanic and Latino American physicists