"Historically, mathematics has been a largely male-dominated field, with women in mathematical academia consistently being underrepresented. A report in 2013 by the London Mathematical Society shows some progress has been made in increasing the participation of women in recent times, with the proportion of women pursuing an undergraduate degree in mathematics in the UK standing at around 42%.
However, when we look at the percentage undertaking a PhD this number drops to 19% and as we progress through the career stages of an academic, eventually we reach the disturbing statistic that only 6% of maths professors in the UK are women. This demonstrates what is sometimes referred to as a ‘leaky pipeline’ – one metaphor to describe the way in which women leave academia at a higher rate than men at every stage of a research career. The current female professors that make up that six percent have spent the last few decades working as mathematicians in a profession where they are largely outnumbered.
I wanted to speak to some women who chose to pursue a career in academia at a time when female mathematicians were few and far between, asking them to tell their stories, understand the challenges they have overcome and highlight the successes they have achieved. The common link between these women? They all started their journey into academia at Oxford in the 1980s, by undertaking a DPhil here at the Mathematical Institute.
The stories that follow come from interviews conducted with the three women: Sarah Rees, Frances Kirwan and Helen Byrne. Sarah Rees is a professor of pure mathematics at Newcastle, the first woman to be appointed to a permanent position in Newcastle’s Faculty of Science. Frances Kirwan is the Savilian Professor of Geometry at the Mathematical Institute here in Oxford, the first woman to hold this position since its creation in 1619. Helen Byrne is a professor of mathematical biology here at Oxford and was the recipient of the 2019 Society for Mathematical Biology Leah Edelstein-Keshet Prize. These women have gone on to have varied and successful careers as academics, providing real insight and new perspectives into their respective fields of mathematics, as well as helping the next generations of women succeed in maths.
The result of these interviews is this piece, describing their contrasting experiences and exploring issues such as: feeling and being treated differently; the importance of having inspiring figures and a strong community around you; the isolating world of research; the challenge of being a mother and a mathematician; what these women view as their biggest successes in life; and much more. The full piece can be found here."
Maddy Underwood
Maddy Underwood is an undergraduate at Worcester College. This article, and the longer piece, is the fruit of her Student Summer Research Project here in Oxford under the guidance of Mate Szabo. The Summer Research Projects aim to give our undergraduates a taste of the world of mathematical research.
Congratulations to Oxford Mathematics and Worcester College undergraduate Ellen who was a joint winner of the British Society for the History of Mathematics Undergraduate Essay Prize for her essay 'The "analysis" of a century: Influences on the etymological development of the word "analysis" in a mathematical context to 1750'.
Ellen says of her work: "I took the History of Maths module as I have always enjoyed hearing about how people and societies have thought about the concepts that we take for granted. I found that learning and exploring the original mathematical texts helped me to contextualise my place as an undergraduate in the overall mathematical story!
"My essay, which was adapted from the essay I submitted for my final coursework, explores the evolving meaning of the word ‘analysis’ in a mathematical context from Oughtred to Euler. It delves into themes including the geometric-analytic distinction and how the nature of mathematical texts, as well as their contents, has helped mathematical ideas to stick."
Ellen completed her degree this summer. Below, you can watch a lecture from the History of Mathematics course she took, one of the many undergraduate lectures we are making available to give an insight in to mathematical life in Oxford.
Oxford Mathematicians Coralia Cartis, Samuel Cohen, Renaud Lambiotte and Terry Lyons have been made Fellows of the Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s national institute for data science and AI.
The Institute’s research spans theoretical foundations of data science and AI, methodological challenges, ethics and societal issues, and applications to a broad range of areas. Turing Fellows are established scholars with proven research excellence in data science, artificial intelligence, or a related field.
Coralia Cartis is Associate Professor in Numerical Optimization and a fellow of Balliol College. Samuel Cohen is an Associate Professor in the Mathematical Institute, a fellow of New College and the theme lead for Machine Learning in Finance at the Alan Turing Institute. Renaud Lambiotte is Professor of Networks and Nonlinear Systems and a fellow of Somerville College; and Terry Lyons is Wallis Professor of Mathematics in Oxford and a fellow of St Anne's College.
A total of 33 Oxford academics from across the mathematical, medical, social, physical and life sciences have been made fellows of the Institute in this round.
Oxford Mathematician Álvaro Cartea has been appointed as the new Director of the Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance (OMI), a world-leading academic research institute at the University of Oxford that specialises in machine learning and data analytics within quantitative finance.
The University of Oxford and Man Group have worked in collaboration since 2007 when Man Group provided cornerstone funding for the OMI and simultaneously opened its co-located commercial research laboratory. Together, the OMI and Man Group’s lab have provided new educational and commercial employment opportunities for quantitative finance researchers, developing and implementing cutting-edge advances in machine learning within systematic investment management.
Alvaro brings significant expertise in algorithmic trading, mathematical finance, financial economics, asset pricing and energy markets to the leadership role. He is currently Professor of Mathematical Finance in Oxford, and a member of the Mathematical and Computational Finance Group. Álvaro was previously Reader in Mathematical Finance at University College London.
Oxford Mathematician James Newton has been awarded a UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) Future Leaders Fellowship. The scheme supports talented people in universities, businesses, and other research and innovation environments and enables universities and businesses to develop their most talented early career researchers and innovators or to attract new people to their organisations, including from overseas.
James Newton's research interests are in number theory and its interactions with algebra and geometry. His work is focused on arithmetic aspects of the Langlands programme, Galois representations and automorphic forms. James received his PhD from Imperial College London and has done postdoctoral work at the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London, followed by a lectureship at King’s College London. He has recently taken up the position of Associate Professor of Number Theory at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow at Merton College, Oxford.
James said of his award:
"I am delighted to receive a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship. This will enable me to lead a research programme investigating fundamental, fascinating problems in mathematics, in the inspirational environment of the Mathematical Institute at Oxford."
The Mathematical Institute, Department of Computer Science and the Department of Statistics at the University of Oxford are consistently ranked amongst the very best mathematical sciences and computer science departments in the world, for both teaching and research. We are committed to attracting the world’s most talented students and working with them, to help them maximise their potential, regardless of race, gender, religion or background.
As part of the University of Oxford’s Black Academic Futures Scholarships we are delighted to invite talented UK Black or Mixed-Black students to apply for four fully funded postgraduate scholarships in 2022-2023 on one of the courses below:
MSc in Mathematical Sciences
MSc in Statistical Sciences
MSc in Advanced Computer Science
MSc in Mathematical Modelling and Scientific Computing
MSc in Mathematics and the Foundations of Computer Science
MSc in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
MSc in Mathematical and Computational Finance
The scholarships cover all tuition fees and provide a grant for living expenses at UKRI rates (£15,609 p.a. in 2021-22). Awards are made for the duration of the period of fee liability for the course to Black or Mixed-Black students who are ordinary residents in the UK.
Jane Street
Oxford University is delighted to be working with Jane Street to present this new scholarship programme to support currently underrepresented groups to pursue their studies at Oxford. Jane Street is a long term partner of the University providing internships and employment opportunities to alumni of the Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Sciences programmes. Jane Street shares the University’s commitment to diversify the Mathematical and Computer Science ecosystems and Oxford University is grateful for Jane Street’s financial support which has made these scholarships possible.
As the new academic year approaches, we're adding to our catalogue of Oxford Mathematics student lectures on our YouTube Channel.
The latest is a lecture from Vicky Neale (pictured) on Monotonic Sequences, part of her first year Analysis 1 course. There are 50 more lectures for you to watch on the Channel covering many aspects of the undergraduate degree, including two full courses. We will add more over the coming weeks, including more lectures from the third and fourth years when students get to specialise.
All first and second year lectures are followed by tutorials where students meet their tutor to go through the lecture and associated problem sheet and to talk and think more about the maths. Third and fourth year lectures are followed by classes.
Oxford Mathematician Frances Kirwan has been awarded the Sylvester Medal 2021 "for her research on quotients in algebraic geometry, including links with symplectic geometry and topology, which has had many applications."
The Sylvester Medal is awarded annually for an outstanding researcher in the field of mathematics. The award was created in memory of the mathematician James Joseph Sylvester who was Savilian Professor of Geometry at the University of Oxford in the 1880s, a post now held by Frances Kirwan (the Savilian celebrated its 400th anniversary in 2019). The Sylvester medal was first awarded in 1901. It is of bronze and is accompanied by a gift of £2,000.
Frances's specialisation is algebraic and symplectic geometry, notably moduli spaces in algebraic geometry, geometric invariant theory (GIT), and the link between GIT and moment maps in symplectic geometry.
Frances has received many honours including being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2001 (only the third female mathematician to attain this honour), and President of the London Mathematical Society from 2003-2005. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2014.
On receiving the award Frances said: "I am honoured to receive this award, especially as it is named after one of my predecessors as Savilian Professor, James Joseph Sylvester, whose work over a hundred years ago on what is today called invariant theory laid the foundations for my own work on geometric invariant theory."
Many of the news stories on our website are about our research, and rightly so as it is an integral part of the academic life. But alongside research, academics are employed to teach, and to teach to the highest standard, providing a pipeline of graduates with the skills needed across the many sectors where they will work.
Oxford's commitment to a professional teaching body is reflected in our new Teaching Recognition Scheme. This is an Oxford-based scheme through which individuals will be able to make a claim for recognition as a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). In addition, those who completed the Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in the first two cohorts have recently had the opportunity to go on to apply for Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).
Two members of the Mathematical Institute, Andrew Krause (who starts at Durham in September) and Vicky Neale, have recently received teaching accreditation through the University's Teaching Recognition Scheme, having both completed the Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education through the University in the last couple of years.
Andrew, a Departmental Lecturer in Applied Mathematics, has been awarded Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy showing that he "demonstrates a personal and institutional commitment to professionalism in learning and teaching in higher education" and is "able to engage with a broad understanding of effective approaches to learning and teaching support as a key contribution to high quality student learning."
Vicky, who is the Mathematical Institute's Faculty Teaching Advisor, was awarded Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy for which the criteria are the same as those for Fellowship, with the addition of "successful coordination, support, supervision, management and/or mentoring of others (whether individuals and/or teams) in relation to learning and teaching."
Four Oxford Mathematicians have been awarded 2021 London Mathematical Society (LMS) Prizes. Ehud Hrushovski is awarded a Pólya Prize, Endre Süli is awarded the Naylor Prize and Lectureship, and Patrick Farrell and Stuart White receive Whitehead Prizes.
Udi Hrushovski's work is concerned with mapping the interactions and interpretations among different mathematical worlds. Endre's research is concerned with the analysis of numerical algorithms for the approximate solution of partial differential equations and the mathematical analysis of nonlinear partial differential equations in continuum mechanics. Patrick works on the numerical solution of partial differential equations, while Stuart's research focuses on operator algebras, a branch of functional analysis with connections to many other branches of pure mathematics.
