Past Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures

Oxford Mathematics Public Lecture

Cascading Principles - Conrad Shawcross, Martin Bridson and James Sparks with Fatos Ustek

Thursday 23 February, 2023
5pm - 6.15pm Andrew Wiles Building, Mathematical Institute, Oxford

Cascading Principles is an exhibition of nearly 40 stunning, mathematically inspired sculptures which are living alongside the mathematicians that inspired them in the Andrew Wiles Building, home to Oxford Mathematics. In this 'lecture', chaired by exhibition curator Fatos Ustek, Conrad will talk about what motivates his work, and how the possibilities and uncertainties of science inform his art. In turn, mathematicians Martin Bridson and James Sparks will describe how a mathematician responds to art motivated by their subject. 

There will be an opportunity to view the exhibition from 4pm on the day of the lecture.

Conrad Shawcross specialises in mechanical sculptures based on philosophical and scientific ideas. He is the youngest living member of the Royal Academy of Arts. James Sparks is Professor of Mathematical Physics and Head of the Mathematical Institute in Oxford. Martin Bridson is Whitehead Professor of Pure Mathematics in Oxford and President of the Clay Mathematics Institute. Fatos Ustek is a curator and writer and a leading voice in contemporary art.

Please email @email to register.

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures and the Conrad Shawcross Exhibition are generously supported by XTX Markets.

Oxford Mathematics Christmas Public Lecture

In this talk we'll look at a variety of delicious delights through a lens of fluid dynamics and mathematical modelling. From perfect roast potatoes to sweet sauces, mathematics gets everywhere!

Helen Wilson is Head of the Department of Mathematics at UCL. She is best known for her work on the chocolate fountain (which will feature in this lecture) but does do serious mathematical modelling as well.

Please email @email to register. The lecture will be followed by mince pies and drinks for all.

This lecture will be available on our Oxford Mathematics YouTube Channel at 5pm on 20th December.

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

A calculator processes numbers without caring that these numbers refer to items in our shopping, or the calculations involved in designing an airplane. Number without context is a remarkable abstraction that we learn as infants and which has profoundly affected our world.

Our lives start, progress in complex ways, and are finally complete. So do tasks executed on a computer. Multimodal streams are a pervasive “type”, and even without fixing the context, have a rich structure. Developing this structure leads to wide-ranging tools that have had award-winning impact on methodology in health care, finance, and computer technology.

Terry Lyons is Professor of Mathematics in Oxford and a Fellow of St Anne's College. His research is supported through the DataSig and Cimda-Oxford programmes.

Please email @email to register.

The lecture will be available on our Oxford Mathematics YouTube Channel on 09 November at 5 pm.

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

In December 2021 mathematicians at Oxford and Sydney universities together with their collaborators at DeepMind announced that they had successfully used tools from machine learning to discover new patterns in mathematics. But what exactly had they done and what are its implications for the future of mathematics and mathematicians?

This online event will feature short talks from each of the four collaborators explaining their work followed by a panel discussion addressing its wider implications.

The speakers:
Alex Davies - DeepMind
Andras Juhasz - University of Oxford
Marc Lackenby - University of Oxford
Geordie Williamson - University of Sydney

The panel will be chaired by Jon Keating, Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy in Oxford.

This is an online only lecture which every one is free to watch:
Oxford Mathematics YouTube

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

A collaborative art installation celebrating the joy, creativity and beauty of mathematics has been in the works for the past two years, and will soon be ready to emerge from its long gestation. The original idea, conceived by textile artist Dominique Ehrmann and mathematician Ingrid Daubechies inspired a team of 24 Mathemalchemists to work together, transforming the whole conception in the process, and bringing their individual expertise and whimsy to a large installation.

Despite the challenges of Covid-19, the team created a fantasy world where herons haul up nets loaded with special knots in the Knotical scene, a tortoise meditates while ambling along Zeno's path, chipmunks and squirrels ponder the mysteries of prime numbers, and a cat named Arnold bakes cookies that tile the plane in the Mandelbrot bakery; and a myriad more mathematical ideas swirl through the air.

This presentation will introduce some of the ideas and components, and show the team at work. Here's a sneak preview:
www.mathemalchemy.org
@mathemalchemy

Multi-award winning Ingrid Daubechies is James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Mathematics and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University.

Watch (no need to register and it will remain available after broadcast):
Oxford Mathematics YouTube

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

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Oxford Mathematics Public Lecture
Tuesday 16 March 2021
5.00-6.00pm

Jon Keating will discuss the statistics of rare, extreme events in various contexts, including: evaluating performance at the Olympics; explaining how glasses freeze; illustrating why computers are more effective than expected at learning; and understanding the Riemann zeta-function, the mathematical object that encodes the mysterious distribution of the prime numbers. 

Jon Keating is Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Oxford and a Fellow of The Queen's College.

Watch live (no need to register and it will stay up afterwards):

Oxford Mathematics Twitter
Oxford Mathematics Facebook
Oxford Mathematics Livestream
Oxford Mathematics YouTube

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

Oxford Mathematics Online Public Lecture in Partnership with Wadham College celebrating Roger Penrose's Nobel Prize

Spacetime Singularities - Roger Penrose, Dennis Lehmkuhl and Melvyn Bragg
Tuesday 16 February 2021
5.00-6.30pm

Dennis Lehmkuhl: From Schwarzschild’s singularity and Hadamard’s catastrophe to Penrose’s trapped surfaces
Roger Penrose: Spacetime singularities - to be or not to be?
Roger Penrose & Melvyn Bragg: In conversation

What are spacetime singularities? Do they exist in nature or are they artefacts of our theoretical reasoning? Most importantly, if we accept the general theory of relativity, our best theory of space, time, and gravity, do we then also have to accept the existence of spacetime singularities?

In this special lecture, Sir Roger Penrose, 2020 Nobel Laureate for Physics, will give an extended version of his Nobel Prize Lecture, describing his path to the first general singularity theorem of general relativity, and to the ideas that sprung from this theorem, notably the basis for the existence of Black Holes. He will be introduced by Dennis Lehmkuhl whose talk will describe how the concept of a spacetime singularity developed prior to Roger's work, in work by Einstein and others, and how much of a game changer the first singularity theorem really was.

The lectures will be followed by an interview with Roger by Melvyn Bragg.

Roger Penrose is the 2020 Nobel Laureate for Physics and Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor in Oxford; Dennis Lehmkuhl is Lichtenberg Professor of History and Philosophy of Physics at the University of Bonn and one of the Editors of Albert Einstein's Collected Papers: Melvyn Bragg is a broadcaster and author best known for his work as editor and presenter of the South Bank Show and In Our Time.

Watch online (no need to register - and the lecture will stay up on all channels afterwards):
Oxford Mathematics Twitter
Oxford Mathematics Facebook
Oxford Mathematics Livestream
Oxford Mathematics YouTube

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lecture are generously supported by XTX Markets

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Humans have been processing information in the world for a long time, finding patterns and learning from our surroundings to solve problems. Today, scientists make sense of complex problems by gathering vast amounts of data, and analysing them with quantitative methods. These methods are important tools to understand the issues facing us: the spread of disease, climate change, or even political movements. But this quantitative toolbox can seem far removed from our individual approaches for processing information in our day-to-day lives. This disconnect and inaccessibility leads to the scientific tools becoming entangled in politics and questions of trust.

In this talk, Anna will describe how some of the ideas at the heart of science’s quantitative tools are familiar to us all. We’ll see how mathematics enables us to turn the ideas into tools. As a society, if we can better connect with the ideas driving this toolbox, we can see when to use (and not to use) the available tools, what’s missing from the toolbox, and how we might come up with new ideas to drive our future understanding of the world around us.

Anna Seigal is a Hooke Research Fellow in the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford and a Junior Research Fellow at The Queen's College.

Watch live (no need to register):
Oxford Mathematics Twitter
Oxford Mathematics Facebook
Oxford Mathematics Livestream
Oxford Mathematics YouTube

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

Is there a secret formula for becoming rich? Or for happiness? Or for becoming popular? Or for self-confidence and good judgement? David Sumpter answer these questions with an emphatic ‘Yes!' All YOU need are The Ten Equations.

In this lecture David will reveal three of these: the confidence equation that helps gamblers know when they have a winning strategy; the influencer equation that shapes our social interactions; and the learning equation that YouTube used to get us addicted to their videos. A small group of mathematicians have used these equations to revolutionise our world. Now you can use them too to better manage your time and make money, have a more balanced approach to your popularity and even to become a nicer person.

To order the book 'The Ten Equations That Rule the World' signed by David Sumpter from Blackwell's Bookshop, email @email by 15 November and they will provide you with all the information you need.

David Sumpter is Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Uppsala, Sweden.

Watch online (no need to register):
Oxford Mathematics Twitter
Oxford Mathematics Facebook
Oxford Mathematics Livestream
Oxford Mathematics YouTube

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

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When was the last time you read a grand statement, accompanied by a large number, and wondered whether it could really be true?

Statistics are vital in helping us tell stories – we see them in the papers, on social media, and we hear them used in everyday conversation – and yet we doubt them more than ever. But numbers, in the right hands, have the power to change the world for the better. Contrary to popular belief, good statistics are not a trick, although they are a kind of magic. Good statistics are like a telescope for an astronomer, or a microscope for a bacteriologist. If we are willing to let them, good statistics help us see things about the world around us and about ourselves.

Tim Harford is a senior columnist for the Financial Times, the presenter of Radio 4’s More or Less and is a visiting fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. His books include The Fifty Things that Made the Modern Economy, Messy, and The Undercover Economist.

To order a personalised copy of Tim's book email @email, providing your name and contact phone number/email and the personalisation you would like. You can then pick up from 16/10 or contact Blackwell's on 01865 792792 from that date to pay and have it sent.

Watch online (no need to register):
Oxford Mathematics Twitter
Oxford Mathematics Facebook
Oxford Mathematics Livestream
Oxford Mathematics YouTube

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

Fantasy Football is played by millions of people worldwide, and there are countless strategies that you can choose to try to beat your friends and win the game. But what’s the best way to play? Should you be patient and try to grind out a win, or are you better off taking some risks and going for glory? Should you pick players in brilliant form, or players with a great run of fixtures coming up? And what is this Fantasy Football thing anyway?

As with many of life’s deep questions, maths can help us shed some light on the answers. We’ll explore some classic mathematical problems which help us understand the world of Fantasy Football. We’ll apply some of the modelling techniques that mathematicians use in their research to the problem of finding better Fantasy Football management strategies. And - if we’re lucky - we’ll answer the big question: Can maths tell us how to win at Fantasy Football?

Joshua Bull is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Mathematical Institute in Oxford and the winner of the 2019-2020 Premier League Fantasy Football competition (from nearly 8 million entrants).

Watch live (no need to register):
https://twitter.com/OxUniMaths
https://www.facebook.com/OxfordMathematics/
https://livestream.com/oxuni/bull
Oxford Mathematics YouTube Channel

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

Mathematical modelling lives a varied life. It links the grey squirrel invasion in the UK to the analysis of how tumour cells invade the body; Alan Turing's model for pattern formation gives insight into animal coat markings and Premier League Football Shirts; and models for Excitability have been used to model the life cycle of the cellular slime mold and heart attacks.

Philip Maini will reveal all in our latest Oxford Mathematics Public Lecture.

Philip Maini is Professor of Mathematical Biology in the University of Oxford.

Watch live:
https://twitter.com/OxUniMaths
https://www.facebook.com/OxfordMathematics/
https://livestream.com/oxuni/Maini

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

For several weeks news media has been full of how contact tracing Smartphone apps could help fight COVID-19. However, mobile phones can do more than just trace - they are vital tools in the measurement, prediction and control of the virus.

Looking at recent epidemics as well as COVID-19, Renaud will discuss the different types of data that researchers have been collecting, demonstrating their pros and cons as well as taking a wider view of where mobile data can help us understand the impact of lockdowns on social behaviour and improve our ways of calibrating and updating our epidemiological models. And he will discuss the issue that underpins all this and which is vital for widespread take-up from the Public: privacy and data protection.

Renaud Lambiotte is Associate Professor of Networks and Nonlinear Systems in Oxford.

Watch live:
https://twitter.com/OxUniMaths
https://www.facebook.com/OxfordMathematics/
https://livestream.com/oxuni/lambiotte

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

Models. They are dominating our Lockdown lives. But what is a mathematical model? We hear a lot about the end result, but how is it put together? What are the assumptions? And how accurate can they be?

In our first online only lecture Robin Thompson, Research Fellow in Mathematical Epidemiology in Oxford, will explain. Robin is working on the ongoing modelling of Covid-19 and has made many and varied media appearances in the past few weeks. We are happy to take questions after the lecture.

Watch live:

https://twitter.com/oxunimaths?lang=en
https://www.facebook.com/OxfordMathematics/
https://livestream.com/oxuni/Thompson

Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets

There is a beautiful mathematical theory of how independent agents tend to synchronise their behaviour when weakly coupled. Examples include how audiences spontaneously rhythmically applause and how nearby pendulum clocks tend to move in sync. Another famous example is that of the London Millennium Bridge. On the day it opened, the bridge underwent unwanted lateral vibrations that are widely believed to be due to pedestrians synchronising their footsteps.

In this talk Alan will explain how this theory is in fact naive and there is a simpler mathematical theory that is more consistent with the facts and which explains how other bridges have behaved including Bristol's Clifton Suspension Bridge. He will also reflect on the nature of mathematical modelling and the interplay between mathematics, engineering and the real world. 

Alan Champneys is a Professor of Applied Non-linear Mathematics at the University of Bristol. 

Please email @email to register.

Watch live:
https://twitter.com/OxUniMaths
https://www.facebook.com/OxfordMathematics/
https://livestream.com/oxuni/Champneys

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

How do you make a star-shaped Cheerio? How do they make the glass on your smartphone screen so flat? And how can you make a vacuum filter that removes the most dust before it blocks? All of these are very different challenges that fall under the umbrella of industrial mathematics. While each of these questions might seem very different, they all have a common theme: we know the final properties of the product we want to make and need to come up with a way of manufacturing this. In this talk we show how we can use mathematics to start with the final desired product and trace the fluid dynamics problem ‘back in time’ to enable us to manufacture products that would otherwise be impossible to produce.

Ian Griffiths is a Professor of Industrial Mathematics and a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford. 

Please email @email to register.

Watch live:
https://www.facebook.com/OxfordMathematics/
https://livestream.com/oxuni/Griffiths

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

This lecture is about mathematical visualization: how to make accurate, effective, and beautiful pictures, models, and experiences of mathematical concepts. What is it that makes a visualization compelling? 

Henry will show examples in the medium of 3D printing, as well as his work in virtual reality and spherical video. He will also discuss his experiences in teaching a project-based class on 3D printing for mathematics students.

Henry Segerman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Oklahoma State University.

Please email @email to register.

Watch live:
https://www.facebook.com/OxfordMathematics/
https://livestream.com/oxuni/Segerman

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

For our popular Christmas lecture this year Chris Budd will give a seasonal talk with a number of light hearted applications of mathematics to the
festive season. 

Chris is currently Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Bath, and Professor of Geometry at Gresham College. He is a passionate populariser of mathematics and was awarded an OBE in 2015 for services to science and maths education.

Please email @email to register.

Watch live:

https://www.facebook.com/OxfordMathematics/
https://livestream.com/oxuni/Budd

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures- The Roger Penrose Lecture

Carlo Rovelli  - Spin networks: the quantum structure of spacetime from Penrose's intuition to Loop Quantum Gravity

Monday 2 December 2019

In developing the mathematical description of quantum spacetime, Loop Quantum Gravity stumbled upon a curious mathematical structure: graphs labelled by spins. This turned out to be precisely the structure of quantum space suggested by Roger Penrose two decades earlier, just on the basis of his intuition. Today these graphs with spin, called "spin networks" have become a common tool to explore the quantum properties of gravity. In this talk Carlo will tell this beautiful story and illustrate the current role of spin networks in the efforts to understand quantum gravity.

Carlo Rovelli is a Professor in the Centre de Physique Théorique de Luminy of Aix-Marseille Université where he works mainly in the field of quantum gravity and  is a founder of loop quantum gravity theory. His popular-science book 'Seven Brief Lessons on Physics' has been translated into 41 languages and has sold over a million copies worldwide.

5.30pm-6.30pm, Mathematical Institute, Oxford

Please email @email to register.

Watch live:
https://facebook.com/OxfordMathematics
https://livestream.com/oxuni/rovelli

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

Productive generalization: one reason we will never run out of interesting mathematical questions.

Tim Gowers is one of the world's leading mathematicians. He is a Royal Society Research Professor at the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics at the University of Cambridge, where he also holds the Rouse Ball chair, and is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1998, he received the Fields Medal for research connecting the fields of functional analysis and combinatorics.

After his lecture Tim will be in conversation with Hannah Fry. Hannah is a lecturer in the Mathematics of Cities at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL. She is also a well-respected broadcaster and the author of several books including the recently published 'Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine.'

This lecture is in partnership with the Science Museum in London where it will take place.  

Science Museum, Exhibition Road, London, SW7 2DD

Please email @email to register.

Watch live:
https://facebook.com/OxfordMathematics
https://livestream.com/oxuni/gowers

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

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Mathematics is the pursuit of truth. But it is a pursuit carried out by human beings with human emotions. Join Vicky as she travels the mathematical rollercoaster.

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Oxford Mathematics is delighted to announce that in partnership with Northumbria University we shall be hosting our first Newcastle Public Lecture on 13 November. Everybody is welcome as we demonstrate the range, beauty and challenges of mathematics. Vicky Neale, Whitehead Lecturer here in Oxford, will be our speaker. Vicky has given a range of Public Lectures in Oxford and beyond and has made numerous radio and television appearances.

5.00pm-6.00pm
Northumbria University
Lecture Theatre 002, Business & Law Building, City Campus East
Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 2SU

Please email @email to register

Watch live:
https://facebook.com/OxfordMathematics
https://livestream.com/oxuni/neale

Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.