In responding to a comment on the previous posting, I was curious if one could easily get some data on relative sizes of grants in mathematics and physics, so started to do a quick search on nsf.gov. Among the first few NSF grants that turned up, I noticed a couple rather odd things:
Award 1056580 for a postdoc in “Dark Energy, Fine-Tuning, and the Multiverse: Testing Theories in Modern Cosmology” drew my eye, since my impression was that NSF physics panels weren’t so likely to support Multiverse Mania research. Taking a look at the details of the award gave the explanation: this one is being funded not by the physics division (PHY) at NSF, but by the sociologists (SES, Division of Social and Economic Studies). So, now it seems that multiverse studies are part of sociology, which is much more appropriate than physics, and has the added advantage of opening up new funding opportunities.
Trying to pick a typical theory group grant, I took a look at Award 0969020, for the string theorists at UT Austin. I was pleased to see that blogging is now a selling point on NSF grants:
Professor Distler authors a blog which discusses and elucidates many of the important research papers which appear on the daily arXiv listings, and he plans to continue his activity.
The abstract was the usual sort of string theory promotional verbiage, beginning:
For the past two decades, string theory has been one of the most intensely investigated areas of theoretical high-energy physics. This is true chiefly because string theory offers what is currently the most successful method of unifying gravity with the other fundamental forces (strong, weak, and electromagnetic).
The next one I took a look at was Award 1001296 to theorists at UPenn, whose abstract sounded kind of familiar, beginning:
For the past two decades, string theory has been one of the most intensely investigated areas of theoretical high-energy physics. This is true chiefly because string theory offers what is currently the most successful method of unifying gravity with the other fundamental forces (strong, weak, and electromagnetic).
www.math.columbia.edu
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