0:21 Interest in and contributions to mathematics in childhood / early youth
3:56 Group theory and Niels Henrik Abel
5:46 Why simple groups are important for classification for finite groups in general - Decomposition theorem
6:52 Group theory: Peter Ludwig Mejdell Sylow and Sophus Lie
7:25 Group Theory: Ferdinand Georg Frobenius and William Burnside
11:44 The impact of buildings and apartments
16:50 BN-pairs and buildings
18:50 Finite group theory and long proofs
22:07 Tits comments on doing original research while 18 years old
23:46 Is mathematics young mans’ game?
25:58 The Inverse Galois Problem
28:21 The classification theorem for finite simple groups
35:12 The E8 story
36:35 The relation between monster / exceptional / sporadic groups and nature
37:10 The proof you are most proud of
39:23 Aha moments
40:33 Thompson group
42:15 Tits group
42:41 How should mathematics be taught to young people?
45:20 Was the 20th century the golden century of mathematics?
46:44 Mathematics in different countries - culture, people, and work environments
49:03 Mathematics and the relation to other research areas
51:23 Interests outside of mathematics
Interview in written. Notices of the American Mathematical Society:
www.ams.org/notices/200904/rt...
The 2008 Abel Prize interview with John Griggs Thompson and Jacques Tits
Interviewers: Mathematicians Martin Raussen og Christian Skau
Produced by UniMedia