In the 50s John Nash astonished the geometers with his celebrated isometric embedding theorems. A folkloristic explanation of his first theorem is that you should be able to put any piece of paper in your pocket without crumpling or folding it, no matter how large it is. Ten years ago Laszlo, Szekelyhidi, and I discovered unexpected similarities with the behaviour of some classical equations in fluid dynamics. Our remark sparked a series of discoveries and works which have gone in several directions. Among them the most notable is the recent proof of Phil Isett of a long-standing conjecture of Lars Onsager in the theory of turbulent flows.
This video is part of Harvard University‘s conference JDG 2017.
