What Is the Positive Grassmannian and Why Does It Show Up Everywhere?
> By Janna Levin and Steven Strogatz
June 25, 2026

https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-the-positive-grassmannian-and-why-does-it-show-up-everywhere-20260625/

> Lauren Williams tells ‘The Joy of Why’ how studying a fundamental object in algebraic combinatorics led to a career full of surprises.

What links certain mathematical models of traffic flow, shallow-water waves, and quantum particle scattering? The surprising answer lies in a corner of the algebraic combinatorics world that goes by the name of pos…