We often need mathematics and science to understand our lives. But we also need the Arts. And especially music. In fact they often work best together.
The Villiers Quartet are Quartet in Residence at Oxford University and on February 8th we welcome them for the first time to the Andrew Wiles Building, home of Oxford Mathematics for an evening of Haydn, Beethoven and Mozart.
For the first time, on February 14th at 10am Oxford Mathematics will be LIVE STREAMING a 1st Year undergraduate lecture. In addition we will film (not live) a real tutorial based on that lecture.
After the huge success of making an undergraduate lecture widely available via social media last term, we know there is an appetite to better understand Oxford teaching. In turn we want to demystify what we do, showing that it is both familiar but also distinctive.
The details:
LIVE Oxford Mathematics Student Lecture - James Sparks: 1st Year Undergraduate lecture on 'Dynamics', the mathematics of how things change with time
14th February, 10am-11am UK time
Watch live and ask questions of our mathematicians as you watch
The lecture will remain available if you can't watch live.
Interviews with students:
We shall also be filming short interviews with the students as they leave the lecture, asking them to explain what happens next. These will be posted on our social media pages.
We are very sorry to hear of the death of Michael Atiyah. Michael was a giant of mathematics. He held many positions including Savilian Professor of Geometry here in Oxford, President of the Royal Society, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, the founding Directorship of the Isaac Newton Institute and Chancellor of the University of Leicester. From 1997, he was an honorary professor in the University of Edinburgh. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1966 and the Abel Prize in 2004.
Michael's work spanned many fields. Together with Hirzebruch, he laid the foundations for topological K-theory, an important tool in algebraic topology which describes ways in which spaces can be twisted. His Atiyah–Singer index theorem, proved with Singer in 1963, not only vastly generalised classical results from the 19th century such as the Riemann-Roch theorem and the Gauss-Bonnet theorem, the work of his teacher Hodge in the 1930s on harmonic integrals, and also Hirzebruch’s work, but also provided an entirely new bridge between analysis and topology which could also act as a mechanism for giving structure to identities in fields as far apart as number theory and group representations.
His more recent work was inspired by theoretical physics and coincided with the arrival of Roger Penrose in Oxford. The two exchanged ideas and realised how modern ideas in algebraic geometry formed the appropriate framework for Penrose’s approach to the equations of mathematical physics. This activity came to a head, following a visit of Singer in 1977, when a problem posed by the physicists on the Yang-Mills equations was solved by a mixture of Penrose’s techniques and some recent sophisticated pure mathematics in the theory of holomorphic vector bundles. As his ideas developed Michael, at the urging of Ed Witten, began to consider quantum field theory more seriously and ultimately he became one of the founders of what is loosely called “quantum mathematics”.
Michael gave his time generously in the promotion of his subject. In May 2018 he gave a very entertaining Public Lecture here in Oxford. His title? 'Numbers are serious but they are also fun.'
Our Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures have been a huge success both in Oxford and London, and across the world through our live broadcasts. Speakers such as Roger Penrose, Stephen Hawking and Hannah Fry have shared the pleasures and challenges of their subject while not downplaying its most significant element, namely the maths. But this is maths for the curious. And all of us can be curious.
On the back of this success we now want to take the lectures farther afield. On 9th January our first Oxford Mathematics Midlands Public Lecture will take place at Solihull School. With topics ranging from prime numbers to the lottery, from lemmings to bending balls like Beckham, Professor Marcus du Sautoy will provide an entertaining and, perhaps, unexpected approach to explain how mathematics can be used to predict the future.
Oxford Mathematician Xenia de la Ossa has been awarded the Dean’s Distinguished Visiting Professorship by the Fields Institute in Toronto and the Mathematics Department of Toronto University for the Fall of 2019. Xenia will be associated with the thematic programme on Homological algebra of mirror symmetry.
Xenia's research interests are in Mathematical Physics, Geometry and Theoretical Physics, specifically in the mathematical structures arising in String Theory.
He calls it a "crazy idea." Then again, he points out, so is the idea of inflation as a way of explaining the beginnings of our Universe.
In our Oxford Mathematics London Public Lecture at the Science Museum in London, Roger Penrose revealed his latest research. In both his talk and his subsequent conversation with fellow mathematician and broadcaster Hannah Fry, Roger speculated on a veritable chain reaction of universes, which he says has been backed by evidence of events that took place before the Big Bang. With Conformal Cyclic Cosmology he argues that, instead of a single Big Bang, the universe cycles from one aeon to the next. Each universe leaves subtle imprints on the next when it pops into being. Energy can 'burst through' from one universe to the next, at what he calls ‘Hawking points.’
In addition to his latest research Roger also reflects on his own approach to his subject ("big-headedness") and his own time at school where he was actually dropped down a maths class. So we are not alone, universally or personally speaking.
The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.
Nick's research spans a wide range within numerical analysis and applied mathematics, in particular the numerical solution of differential equations, fluid mechanics and numerical linear algebra. He is also the author of several very successful books which, as the Fribourg award acknowledges, have widened interest and nourished scientific discussion well beyond mathematics.
Much is written about life as an undergraduate at Oxford but what is it really like? As Oxford Mathematics's new first-year students arrive (273 of them, comprising 33 nationalities) we thought we would take the opportunity to go behind the scenes and share some of their experiences.
Our starting point is a first week lecture. In this case the second lecture from 'An Introduction to Complex Numbers' by Dr. Vicky Neale. Whether you are a past student, an aspiring student or just curious as to how teaching works, come and take a seat. We have already featured snippets from the lecture on social media where comments have ranged from a debate about whiteboards to discussions abut standards. However, there has also been appreciation of the fact that we are giving an insight in to a system that is sometimes seem as unnecessarily mysterious. In fact there is no mystery, just an opportunity to see how we present the subject and how that differs from the school experience, as much in presentation as content though of course that stiffens as the weeks go by.
According to John Eliot Gardiner in his biography of Johann Sebastian Bach, nothing in Bach's rigid Lutheran schooling explains the scientific precision of his work. However, that precision has attracted scientists and mathematicians in particular to the composer's work, not least as its search for structure and beauty seems to chime with their own approach to their subject.
In this Oxford Mathematics Public Lecture Oxford Mathematician James Sparks, himself a former organ scholar at Selwyn College Cambridge, demonstrates just how explicit Bach's mathematical framing is and City of London Sinfonia elucidate with excerpts from the Goldberg Variations. This was one of our most successful Public Lectures, an evening where the Sciences and the Humanities really were in harmony.
Please note this film does not include the full concert performance of the Goldberg Variations.
Congratulations to Oxford Mathematicians Vicky Neale and Ursula Martin who have been nominated for Suffrage Science awards. The awards celebrate women in science and encourage others to enter science and reach senior leadership roles. The 11 awardees are chosen by the previous award holders and the awards themselves are items of jewellery, inspired by the Suffrage movement, and are passed on as heirlooms from one female scientist to the next.
Ursula was nominated by Professor Dame Wendy Hall, University of Southampton and Vicky was nominated by Professor Dame Celia Hoyles, University College London.
