The paper is concerned with problems in an area that has
undergone a rapid development recently and which has connections
with different parts of mathematics.
Does
it describe a new discovery or a new methodology that's useful to
others?
The paper discusses recent developments connecting random matrix
theory and certain problems in probability theory related to
statistical physics. In this area it proves new results and is also
a starting point for further research.
Could
you summarize the significance of your paper in layman's terms?
Probability distributions play an important role in many parts of
science. The most well-known distribution is the normal or Gauss
distribution. The paper concerns the investigation of probability
distributions which have been discovered only rather recently. These
distributions turned out to occur in problems where they were not
expected. This indicates that these distributions have a wider
applicability and it is an interesting problem to understand the
mathematical reasons for these occurrences.
How
did you become involved in this research?
I have been interested in random matrix theory for a long time.
This article is a continuation of work that was begun in a joint
paper with Jinho Baik, an Assistant Professor in the Mathematics
Department at Princeton University and Percy Deift, a Professor in
the Department of Mathematics at the Courant Institute of
Mathematical Sciences at NYU.
Kurt Johansson, Professor of Mathematics,
Department of Mathematics,
Royal Institute of Technology,
Stockholm, Sweden
