Aperiodical News Roundup – February 2024

Here’s some mathematical news we didn’t otherwise cover this month.

A collaborative project involving Dennis Gaitsgory and several pals claim they are compiling a proof of the geometric Langlands conjecture, consisting of a series of papers. (via Anton Hilado)

It’s been announced that all European Mathematical Society journals will be diamond open access in 2024. It follows their Subscribe To Open programme, and means that “for the first time the [EMS] Press’s annual journal output will be entirely open access, with a blend of S2O and Diamond publications”.

Maths history news: it’s been making the rounds this month that the invention of the decimal point was actually much earlier than thought, and can be pushed back 150 years to the work of Giovanni Bianchini in the 1440s. The findings have been published by mathematician and maths historian Glen Van Brummelen, who previously spoke about this in 2020 to maths podcaster Sam Hansen for an episode of their Relatively Prime podcast.

And finally: Richard Parker (pictured), one of the authors of the legendary Atlas of Finite Groups, has died, and is remembered fondly by fellow Atlas bod Robin Wilson in this lovely blog post. (via Peter Cameron)