Teaching and Learning

Roger Penrose was 95 on Saturday. The fire still burns bright.

Propose a talk, panel or workshop for OxFOS, Oxford's free, University-wide conference (8–11 March 2027), exploring how research can be more open, transparent and accessible. This year's theme is The Costs of Knowledge.

Submit your proposal by 14 October 2026

Image: Joachim Patinir - The Feeding of the Five Thousand

It has been erroneously suggested that we are using Pluto, our feline favourite, to sneak maths into the lives of people who don't understand it. Actually, we are using maths to sneak cats into the lives of people who don't understand them.

Pi and maths in India are on the menu in the last 'Tower of Babel'. Unlike other mathematical words, Pi has a habit of being the same in many languages.

Pi Day is on 14 March each year (geddit?). But if you don't want to be reminded of maths, there's always National Pie Day (US) or Pie Week (UK). Much too filling.

Pluto isn't doing much here. In fact he's not doing anything at all. But from his sedentary position, he is demonstrating an important piece of mathematics. Doesn't he always?

Latest episode of 'the Summer of Sam'.

Equations (in seven tongues) and al-Khwarizmi are the stars of Tower of Babel Episode 8. 

A long time ago, in a distant land called the English summer, you'd often see, in gardens, long tubes, usually made of rubber or plastic. At the end of these tubes, hands would wave the tube about and water might - or might not - gush. Happy days.

Do we spend much time thinking about colleagues' mathematical schooldays? Presumably they were all a bit similar, it being maths, the universal language etc. But behind each story lies language (or lack of it). And political circumstance.

Here's Radek.

The recent original student production Noether, the story of mathematician Emmy Noether in her and her contemporaries' own words, is now available on our YouTube Channel. And the production will be back in the building in the autumn for one night only before touring.

It's that moment again, when you find out you haven't won a Fields Medal.

The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), held every four years, is in Philadelphia next week and you can watch with colleagues as we are streaming the opening ceremony in L3 from just before 2 p.m (when the medals are announced). As well as the Fields, there are other prestigious medals such as the Chern and the Abacus, so it's well worth a watch.