Oxford Mathematics London Public Lecture: Timothy Gowers - Productive generalization: one reason we will never run out of interesting mathematical questions
In our Oxford Mathematics London Public Lecture held at the Science Museum, Fields Medallist Tim Gowers uses the principle of generalization to show how mathematics progresses in its relentless pursuit of problems.
After the lecture in a fascinating Q&A with Hannah Fry, Tim discusses how he approaches problems, both mathematical and personal.
Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.
Our latest online student lecture is the first in the Quantum Theory course for Second Year Students. Fernando Alday reflects on the breakdown of the deterministic world and describes some of the experiments that defined the new Quantum Reality.
This is the sixth lecture in our series of Oxford Mathematics Student Lectures. The lectures aim to throw a light on the student experience and how we teach. All lectures are followed by tutorials where pairs of students spend an hour with their tutor to go through the lectures and accompanying work sheets.
An overview of the course and the relevant materials are available here:
We continue with our series of Student Lectures with this first lecture in the 2nd year Course on Differential Equations. Professor Philip Maini begins with a recap of the previous year's work before moving on to give examples of ordinary differential equations which exhibit either unique, non-unique, or no solutions. This leads us to Picard's Existence and Uniqueness Theorem...
This latest student lecture is the fifth in our series shining a light on the student experience in Oxford Mathematics. We look forward to your feedback. The full course overview and materials can be found here:
Oxford Mathematician James Maynard has been awarded the 2020 Cole Prize in Number Theory by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) "for his many contributions to prime number theory."
James is one of the leading lights in world mathematics, having made dramatic advances in analytic number theory in the years immediately following his 2013 doctorate. These advances have brought him worldwide attention in mathematics and beyond and many prizes including the European Mathematical Society Prize, the Ramanujan Prize and the Whitehead Prize. In 2017 he was appointed Research Professor in Oxford.
James paid tribute to the many people whose work laid the foundations for his own discoveries and the people who have guided him in his career, from his parents to school teachers and university supervisors. He added: "the field of analytic number theory feels revitalised and exciting at the moment with new ideas coming from many different people, and hopefully this prize might inspire younger mathematicians to continue this momentum and make new discoveries about the primes."
The Cole Prize in Number Theory recognizes a notable research work in number theory that has appeared in the last six years. The work must be published in a recognized, peer-reviewed journal.
Oxford Mathematician Ehud Hrushovski has been awarded the 2019 Heinz Hopf Prize for his outstanding contributions to model theory and their application to algebra and geometry.
The Heinz Hopf Prize at ETH Zurich honours outstanding scientific achievements in the field of pure mathematics. The prize is awarded every two years with the recipient giving the Heinz Hopf Lecture. This year Ehud spoke on 'Logic and geometry: the model theory of finite fields and difference fields.'
Katharine Beaugié - Light Sculpture
Medea Bindewald - Harpsichord
Curated by Balázs Szendrői
Concert: 18 November, 6.45pm followed by a reception
Exhibition: 18th November – 6th December 2019, Mon-Fri, 8am-6pm
Applied Pure is a unique collaboration between light sculptor Katharine Beaugié and international concert harpsichordist Medea Bindewald, combining the patterns made by water and light with the sound of harpsichord music in a mathematical environment.
Katharine Beaugié will also be exhibiting a new series of large-scale photograms (photographic shadows), displaying the patterns of the natural phenomena of human relationship with water and light.
The Programme of music for harpsichord and water includes the composers: Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757), Johann Jakob Froberger (1616-1667), Enno Kastens (b 1967) and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750).
For more information about the concert and exhibition which is FREE please click this link
Oxford Mathematician Martin Bridson together with co-author André Haefliger has won the 2020 Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition awarded by the American Mathematical Society for the book 'Metric Spaces of Non-positive Curvature', published by Springer-Verlag in 1999.
In the words of the citation "Metric Spaces of Non-positive Curvature is the authoritative reference for a huge swath of modern geometric group theory. It realizes Mikhail Gromov's vision of group theory studied via geometry, has been the fundamental textbook for many graduate students learning the subject, and has paved the way for the developments of the subsequent decades."
Professor Martin Bridson is Whitehead Professor of Pure Mathematics in Oxford, A Fellow of Magdalen College and President of the Clay Mathematics Institute. His research interests lie in geometric group theory, low-dimensional topology, and spaces of non-positive curvature. Born on the Isle of Man, In 2016 Martin became only the second Manxman to ever be elected to the Royal Society, after Edward Forbes.
As part of our 'going behind the scenes' at Oxford Mathematics, we offer the fourth in our series of real student lectures. In our latest lecture we give you a taste of the Oxford Mathematics Student experience as it begins in its very first week.
This is the first lecture in the Introductory Calculus course. Dan Ciubotaru summarises how the course works and what we expect the new students to already know in order to ensure all of them are prepared for the more complex work ahead. We will be filming two more lectures for second year students very shortly.
This autumn we welcomed the first students on the EPSRC CDT in Mathematics of Random Systems: Analysis, Modelling and Algorithms. The CDT (Centre for Doctoral Training) is a partnership between the Mathematical Institute and the Department of Statistics here in Oxford, and the Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London. Its ambition is to train the next generation of academic and industry experts in stochastic modelling, advanced computational methods and Data Science.
In the first year, students follow four core courses on Foundation areas as well as three elective courses, and undertake a supervised research project, which then evolves into a PhD thesis. Our first cohort of 16 students joined in September for an introductory week of intensive courses in Oxford on stochastic analysis, data science, function spaces and programming. Course director Rama Cont (Oxford), and co-directors Thomas Cass (Imperial) and Ben Hambly (Oxford) put the students through their paces with the first week ending with a round of junk yard golf - a perfect tool for applying mathematics skills to the world around us.
Over the year the students will spend some of their days on courses at Oxford and some at Imperial, take part in residential courses in the UK and overseas while all the time firming up their research plans with supervisors at their home department.
In addition to our main funding from EPSRC, we have received support from our industrial partners including Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan and InstaDeep. We are excited to see our first cohort of students start their 4 year journeys. Applications are now open for fully funded studentships to start in Autumn 2020. Find out more.
Productive generalization: one reason we will never run out of interesting mathematical questions.
We are delighted that Tim Gowers will be giving this year's Oxford Mathematics London Public Lecture followed by a question and answer session with Hannah Fry (and the audience!).
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.
