Tuesday, November 20, 2007

job compatibility dilemma.

suppose that
  1. i've written one joint paper in the subject of analysis of PDE,
  2. but haven't studied PDE in a few years,
  3. and the next slew of papers that i'll (hopefully) write will be metric-geometrical in nature;
is it fair to say that my research interests include PDE?


the problem: if i say that i am a PDE guy, then people imagine all sorts of things, like
  • numerical methods and simulations,
  • the KdV equation and wave propagation,
  • curvature flows on manifolds,
  • actual applications in the real world,
and so on. none of these things describe me.

for the same reason, unless i am in finland i almost never refer to what i do as "geometric analysis," because it would sound like i study PDE on Riemannian manifolds, or Ricci flows.


argh.

everyone wants a PDE guy or an algebraic geometer or a mathematical biologist, or perhaps a banach spaces/convex geometer.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

I write "nonsmooth geometric analysis". Curvature bounds: yes, curvature flow: no. :)

janus said...

you know, i noticed that when i was browsing through your vitae.

(at the time, i was looking for examples of what a vitae should look like. it only reminds me how meager mine appears.)

Unknown said...

I remember Kleiner saying "geometric mapping theory" in a talk about his project with Cheeger and Naor.

janus said...

maybe my experience is narrow, due to specialization, but i don't know too many mappings of space which are not geometric. (:

Unknown said...

"Geometric" refers to theory, not mappings.
Incidentally, I recall that Morrey once wrote a paper titled "Partial regularity results for non-linear elliptic systems". He meant to say that his results were only partial. But some people read the title differently, and the theory of Partial Regularity was born.