In case you missed it in this week's divisional newsletter, Dominic Vella has received one of the MPLS teaching awards. Congratulations to Dominic.
We announced our supervision awardees in a recent Bulletin and we didn't win anything else. As someone said, all prizes are rubbish, but that doesn't mean I don't want to win one.
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.
Image: Panathenaic amphora, a victory prize from c530 BC depicting a foot race, attributed to the painter Euphiletos
One of the pleasures of Oxford is walking across to Port Meadow, open grassland unploughed for 4000 years where cows cool their cloven hooves in the River Thames (known as the Isis here in Oxford) and people wild swim alongside swans and geese. Idyllic (except for the hundreds of teenagers). But we're mathematicians, so we have other watery things on our mind.
A leopard may not be able to change its spots, but a mathematician can.
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.
Each year the MPLS Division recruits a group of talented individuals who are passionate about equality, diversity and inclusion and are dedicated to making positive change within our institution. Together, these EDI Fellows work to develop initiatives, inform and implement our EDI action plan, and lead on activity to enable supportive and inclusive cultures within their departments and across MPLS.
If you are interested in applying to be an EDI Fellow in the 2026-2027 academic year, more information is available online. Deadline: 16 September.
Image: Henri Matisse - the Dream
Not an old warhorse, but offering something new each time, as one critic said of 23 year-old American composer Samuel Barber's masterpiece. Barber himself got a bit tired of its success, the price of peaking early.
Leonard Bernstein takes it slowly as he conducts the New York Philharmonic. Contemplation for a summer's evening.