One of our aims in Oxford Mathematics is to show what it is like to be an Oxford Mathematics student. With that in mind we have started to make student course materials available and last Autumn we filmed and made available a first year lecture on Complex Numbers. And last week, as we promised, we went a step further and livestreamed a first year lecture. James Sparks was our lecturer and Dynamics his subject. In addition, we interviewed students as they left the lecture in preparation for filming a tutorial which will also be made available later this week.
It has taken over 800 years to get here, but we are delighted to be able to share what we do and show that it is both familiar and challenging. The lecture is below together with the interviews. We welcome your thoughts. The tutorial will follow.
It's Valentine's Day this Thursday (14th February in case you've forgotten) and Love AND Maths are in the air. For the first time, at 10am Oxford Mathematics will be LIVE STREAMING a 1st Year undergraduate lecture. In addition we will film (not live) a real tutorial based on that lecture.
The details:
LIVE Oxford Mathematics Student Lecture - James Sparks: 1st Year Undergraduate lecture on 'Dynamics', the mathematics of how things change with time
14th February, 10am-11am UK time
Watch live and ask questions of our mathematicians as you watch
The lecture will remain available if you can't watch live.
Interviews with students:
We shall also be filming short interviews with the students as they leave the lecture, asking them to explain what happens next. These will be posted on our social media pages.
The Mathematics of Random Systems: Analysis, Modelling and Algorithms is our new EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT), and a partnership between three world-class departments in the area of probabilistic modelling, stochastic analysis and their applications: the Mathematical Institute, Oxford, the Department of Statistics in Oxford and the Dept 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.
The CDT offers a 4-year comprehensive training programme at the frontier of scientific research in probability, stochastic analysis, stochastic modelling, stochastic computational methods and applications in physics, finance, biology, healthcare and data science.
For further information and instructions on how to apply click here.
Looking for shapes and patterns isn't only a mathematical pursuit of course. Artists are also drawn to geometry. Our latest Oxford Mathematics photography exhibition is 'Urban Geometry' by Ania Ready & Magda Wolna. Ania and Magda describe their work:
"Human eyes are naturally drawn to shapes and patterns, regardless of whether they look at modern buildings or vast landscapes. We decided to focus on the geometrical beauty of the urban environment. We explore various aspects of it, or to borrow from the shared photographic and geometrical vocabulary, various “angles” of it. We play with lines, focal points, repetitions and also with our Polish heritage."
Ania and Magda are Oxfordshire-based photographers and members of the Oxford Photographic Society. The exhibition runs from 4-21 February 2019.
Oxford Mathematics is delighted to announce that Prof. Jon Keating FRS, the Henry Overton Wills Professor of Mathematics in Bristol, and Chair of the Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research, has been appointed to the Sedleian Professorship of Natural Philosophy in the University of Oxford.
Jon has wide-ranging interests but is best known for his research in random matrix theory and its applications to quantum chaos, number theory and the Riemann zeta function. In November, he will be the next President of the LMS.
The Sedleian is regarded as the oldest of Oxford's scientific chairs and holders are simultaneously elected to fellowships at Queen's College, Oxford. Recent holders have included Brooke Benjamin (1979-1995) who did highly influential work in the areas of mathematical analysis and fluid mechanics and most recently Sir John Ball (1996-2018), who is distinguished for his work in the mathematical theory of elasticity, materials science, the calculus of variations, and infinite-dimensional dynamical systems.
We often need mathematics and science to understand our lives. But we also need the Arts. And especially music. In fact they often work best together.
The Villiers Quartet are Quartet in Residence at Oxford University and on February 8th we welcome them for the first time to the Andrew Wiles Building, home of Oxford Mathematics for an evening of Haydn, Beethoven and Mozart.
For the first time, on February 14th at 10am Oxford Mathematics will be LIVE STREAMING a 1st Year undergraduate lecture. In addition we will film (not live) a real tutorial based on that lecture.
After the huge success of making an undergraduate lecture widely available via social media last term, we know there is an appetite to better understand Oxford teaching. In turn we want to demystify what we do, showing that it is both familiar but also distinctive.
The details:
LIVE Oxford Mathematics Student Lecture - James Sparks: 1st Year Undergraduate lecture on 'Dynamics', the mathematics of how things change with time
14th February, 10am-11am UK time
Watch live and ask questions of our mathematicians as you watch
The lecture will remain available if you can't watch live.
Interviews with students:
We shall also be filming short interviews with the students as they leave the lecture, asking them to explain what happens next. These will be posted on our social media pages.
We are very sorry to hear of the death of Michael Atiyah. Michael was a giant of mathematics. He held many positions including Savilian Professor of Geometry here in Oxford, President of the Royal Society, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, the founding Directorship of the Isaac Newton Institute and Chancellor of the University of Leicester. From 1997, he was an honorary professor in the University of Edinburgh. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1966 and the Abel Prize in 2004.
Michael's work spanned many fields. Together with Hirzebruch, he laid the foundations for topological K-theory, an important tool in algebraic topology which describes ways in which spaces can be twisted. His Atiyah–Singer index theorem, proved with Singer in 1963, not only vastly generalised classical results from the 19th century such as the Riemann-Roch theorem and the Gauss-Bonnet theorem, the work of his teacher Hodge in the 1930s on harmonic integrals, and also Hirzebruch’s work, but also provided an entirely new bridge between analysis and topology which could also act as a mechanism for giving structure to identities in fields as far apart as number theory and group representations.
His more recent work was inspired by theoretical physics and coincided with the arrival of Roger Penrose in Oxford. The two exchanged ideas and realised how modern ideas in algebraic geometry formed the appropriate framework for Penrose’s approach to the equations of mathematical physics. This activity came to a head, following a visit of Singer in 1977, when a problem posed by the physicists on the Yang-Mills equations was solved by a mixture of Penrose’s techniques and some recent sophisticated pure mathematics in the theory of holomorphic vector bundles. As his ideas developed Michael, at the urging of Ed Witten, began to consider quantum field theory more seriously and ultimately he became one of the founders of what is loosely called “quantum mathematics”.
Michael gave his time generously in the promotion of his subject. In May 2018 he gave a very entertaining Public Lecture here in Oxford. His title? 'Numbers are serious but they are also fun.'
Our Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures have been a huge success both in Oxford and London, and across the world through our live broadcasts. Speakers such as Roger Penrose, Stephen Hawking and Hannah Fry have shared the pleasures and challenges of their subject while not downplaying its most significant element, namely the maths. But this is maths for the curious. And all of us can be curious.
On the back of this success we now want to take the lectures farther afield. On 9th January our first Oxford Mathematics Midlands Public Lecture will take place at Solihull School. With topics ranging from prime numbers to the lottery, from lemmings to bending balls like Beckham, Professor Marcus du Sautoy will provide an entertaining and, perhaps, unexpected approach to explain how mathematics can be used to predict the future.
Oxford Mathematician Xenia de la Ossa has been awarded the Dean’s Distinguished Visiting Professorship by the Fields Institute in Toronto and the Mathematics Department of Toronto University for the Fall of 2019. Xenia will be associated with the thematic programme on Homological algebra of mirror symmetry.
Xenia's research interests are in Mathematical Physics, Geometry and Theoretical Physics, specifically in the mathematical structures arising in String Theory.
