Gui-Qiang G. Chen is awarded the Pólya Prize for his deep research into nonlinear partial differential equations, and in particular his rigorous theoretical analysis of the equations of gas dynamics, especially those involving transonic flows.
Emmanuel Breuillard is awarded the Fröhlich Prize for his landmark work on groups and their actions, masterly combining in ingenious ways algebraic groups, combinatorics, number theory, Diophantine approximation, topology and C*-algebras. His work is notable for its originality, conceptual clarity, elegance and depth.
James Newton is awarded a Whitehead Prize for his groundbreaking contributions to the Langlands programme, and in particular for his spectacular joint proof with Jack Thorne of symmetric power functoriality for holomorphic modular forms.
They are the subject of Oxford Mathematics postgraduate student theses, displaying how much ground maths can cover. You can watch the six students present their research in just one slide in our 3-Minute Thesis Competition.
Starring (at 3 minute intervals): Tommy Muller - The Geometry of Tensors and Higher Quivers Javier Chico Vasquez - The Mathematics of Balance Sofía Marlasca Aparicio - Purely Inseparable Galois Theory Kit Gallagher - How would Charles Darwin treat cancer? Ouissal Moumou - Quantum Pre- and Post-Selection Paradoxes Wojciech Aleksander Woloszyn - The Mathematics of Possibility
Have you ever wondered what happens in a research meeting between a professor and a postdoc or graduate student?
As part of our demystifying of mathematical (and not just mathematical) life, Fields Medallist James Maynard and postdoctorcal researcher Lasse Grimmelt allowed us to film one of their meetings. The mathematics may be very specific, but it is the interaction and process that has proved so interesting to the outside world, mathematical or not. And perhaps, so recognisable.
James and Lasse are anayltic number theorists. Lasse researches the connection between the spectral theory of automorphic forms and number theoretical problems like the twin primes conjecture. In this meeting Lasse talks to James about applying his new insights, for example their potential to improve results related to primes in large arithmetic progressions, particularly their application on prime gaps.
Between 1905 and 1910 the idea of the random walk was invented simultaneously and independently by multiple people in multiple countries for completely different purposes. In the UK, the story starts with Ronald Ross and the problem of mosquito control, but elsewhere, the theory was being developed in domains from physics to finance to winning a theological argument (really!).
In this Oxford Mathematics Public Lecture, Jordan will tell some part of this story and also gesture at ways that random walks (or Markov processes, named after the theological arguer) underlie current approaches to artificial intelligence; he will touch on some of his own work with DeepMind and speculate about the capabilities of those systems now and in the future.
Jordan Ellenberg is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of best-selling works of non-fiction and fiction, and has written and lectured extensively for a general audience about the wonders of mathematics for over fifteen years.
Please email @email to register to attend in person.
The lecture will be broadcast on the Oxford Mathematics YouTube Channel on Thursday 18 July at 5-6pm and any time after (no need to register for the online version).
The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.
Oxford Mathematician Alain Goriely has been appointed Gresham Professor of Geometry. The Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, London, is one of ten lecturers whose roles are to give free educational lectures to the general public, the purpose for which the college was founded in 1597 in the will of Thomas Gresham. In total there are over 130 public lectures a year, all of which are online.
Alain's work ranges across many areas of applied mathematics including the mechanics of biological growth, the modelling of the brain, the theoretical foundations of mechanics, the dynamics of curves, knots, and rods, the modelling of cancer, the development of new photovoltaic devices, the modelling of lithium-ion batteries and, more generally the study and development of mathematical methods for applied sciences.
Alain has also given many public lectures on his work and mathematics more broadly and was formerly Director of External Relations for Oxford Mathematics in which role he instigated and developed the popular Oxford Mathematics Public Lecture series.
In his first series of lectures, Alain will explore how mathematics is being used to understand the brain.
Alain is the author of Morphoelasticity: The Mathematics and Mechanics of Biological Growth' and 'Applied Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction'.
'Show Me the Maths' gets down to the detail of the mathematics that takes place round here. These short, 90-second films, deliberately display the complexity of our subject. They span fundamental mathematics such as quasi-coherent sheaves and Dirichlet L-functions while also taking in our work in applied mathematics, such as the modelling of cancer treatment and efforts to make complex mathematics accessible to companies who need to use it in product development. And for good measure, we feature our research in to the history of mathematics, in this case the treatment of Jewish mathematicians in Soviet Russia.
You can access the full playlist here while below are two of films starring number theorist Lasse Grimmelt and mathematical historian Petra Stankovic.
Terry Tao is one of the world's leading mathematicians and winner of many awards including the Fields Medal. He is Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Following his talk Terry will be in conversation with fellow mathematician Po-Shen Loh.
Please email @email to register to attend in person. Please note this lecture is in London.
This lecture has now sold out, but it will be broadcast on the Oxford Mathematics YouTube Channel on Wednesday 7th August at 5pm and any time after (no need to register for the online version).
The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.
Oxford Mathematician Emmanuel Breuillard has been elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), the UK’s national academy of sciences and the oldest science academy in continuous existence.
Emmanuel is Professor of Pure Mathematics in Oxford and a Fellow of Worcester College. He works at the interface between algebra and analysis. He has made contributions to the study of finite and infinite groups, using a wealth of methods from diverse areas of mathematics, including combinatorics, mathematical logic, probability theory, dynamics, or diophantine analysis.
Among them feature his work on free subgroups of Lie groups, the development (with Ben Green and Terence Tao) of a structure theory for approximate groups, and his study (with Peter Varju) of mixing and equidistribution phenomena for random walks on groups with applications to self-similarity and random polynomials. He was a recipient of an EMS Prize in 2012, was an invited speaker at the ICM in 2014 and is a member of Academia Europaea since 2021.
Oxford Mathematics now has 34 Fellows of the Royal Society among its current and retired members: Fernando Alday, John Ball, Bryan Birch, Martin Bridson, Philip Candelas, Marcus du Sautoy, Artur Ekert, Alison Etheridge, Alain Goriely, Ian Grant, Ben Green, Roger Heath-Brown, Nigel Hitchin, Ehud Hrushovski, Ioan James, Dominic Joyce, Jon Keating, Frances Kirwan, Terry Lyons, Philip Maini, Vladimir Markovic, James Maynard, Jim Murray, John Ockendon, Roger Penrose, Jonathan Pila, Graeme Segal, Endre Süli, Martin Taylor, Ulrike Tillmann, Nick Trefethen, Andrew Wiles, Alex Wilkie, and Emmanuel himself, of course.
The newly-created Academy for the Mathematical Sciences today announced that Oxford Mathematician Alison Etheridge OBE FRS will be its first President. She will take up the role from 17 June 2024.
The UK-wide Academy will focus on mathematical sciences wherever they happen. This includes teaching and education, academic research pushing the frontiers of what is known, and mathematical sciences in business and in government. It recognises that many crucial policy areas affecting mathematical sciences are devolved. It will also have a wide and inclusive definition of mathematical sciences - and is committed to improving opportunities for previously underrepresented groups of people.
Alison is Professor of Probability in Oxford, having worked at the Universities of Cambridge, Berkeley, Edinburgh and Queen Mary University London before returning to Oxford. Her interests have ranged from abstract mathematical problems to concrete applications with her recent work focused on mathematical modelling of population genetics. She was Head of the Department of Statistics in Oxford until August 2022.
Alison herself says: " by bringing together the whole mathematical sciences community, the Academy will have an authoritative and persuasive voice and so achieve its ambition of enabling the mathematical sciences to deliver on its full potential.”
The lectures cover all four years of our undergraduate courses, from the initial 'Introduction to Mathematics' to the advanced lectures of the later years on such topics as Networks and Analytic Number Theory. There are several 'whole' courses together with self-contained samples from other courses.
