Jim Simons and C.N. Yang interviewed by Bill Zimmerman

… about math (geometry)/physics interplay.

Yang: there are two types of modern math books – the ones which you cannot read beyond the first page and the ones which you cannot read beyond the first sentence. Stinrood is of the latter kind.

LOL

Simons organizes new institute (6 faculty members, around 30 visitors per year), and Yang suggests that a part of the research program will be devoted to string theory. Simons agrees but says that he does not want the name of the institute to be completely associated with string theory.

They talk about LHC a bit, which will start running next year (unless they will see funding cuts, as Yang drops – he probably means the fact that Austria wanted to leave the project at some point). Simons replies that although he help to save RHIC, LHC guys will have to save the project themselves

Yang is very much excited about the possibility for Higgs boson not to be discovered at LHC.

Simons speculates that the nature of quantum mechanics may be related to behaviour of geometry at very small scales.

Via Peter Woit.