We will be celebrating the discovery of 'The Hat', a tile which tiles only aperiodically, on the 20th and 21st July here in the Mathematical Institute, Oxford. Come and join us!
The theory of tilings in the plane touches on diverse areas of mathematics, physics and beyond. Aperiodic sets of tiles, such as the famous Penrose tiling that you see as you walk into the Mathematical Institute, admit tilings of the plane without any translational symmetry.
The Penrose tiling is made of two elementary shapes, or tiles, and mathematicians have long wondered about the existence of a single tile that could tile the plane aperiodically. Earlier this year such a shape was discovered: the hat! This hat turned out to be the first of a whole family, and is being celebrated across a two-day meeting in Oxford.
Confirmed speakers include Roger Penrose (Oxford), Rachel Greenfeld (Institute for Advanced Study), Jarkko Kari (Turku), Natalie Priebe-Frank (Vassar), Lorenzo Sadun (UT Austin), Marjorie Senechal (Smith College), and the authors of The Hat pre-print. There will be space for a small number of contributed talks.
The first day will consist of talks accessible to the public, ending in a panel discussion (register separately) between the speakers, chaired by Dr Henna Koivusalo (Bristol). The second day will be colloquium-style talks aimed at the broadest possible audience of mathematicians and physicists. There will also be exhibits by a number of invited artists, and activities related to aperiodic tilings.
The event is free and open to the public. There will be funding available to cover the travel and accommodation costs of PhD students, Postdocs, and Early Career Researchers, courtesy of the Institute of Physics' Theory of Condensed Matter group and the Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research.
For more information, please contact the organisers: Felix Flicker (@email), Nick Jones (@email), Henna Koivusalo (@email), and Mike Whittaker (@email).
Starting from just a sheet of paper, by folding, stacking, crumpling, sometimes tearing, in this Oxford Mathematics Public Lecture, Tadashi Tokieda explores a diversity of phenomena, from magic tricks and geometry through elasticity and the traditional Japanese art of origami to medical devices and an ‘h-principle’.
Much of the show consists of table-top demonstrations, which you can try later with friends and family.
So, take a sheet of paper. . .
Tadashi Tokieda is a professor of mathematics at Stanford. He grew up as a painter in Japan, became a classical philologist (not to be confused with philosopher) in France and, having earned a PhD in pure mathematics from Princeton, has been an applied mathematician in England and the US; all in all, he has lived in eight countries so far. Tadashi is very active in mathematical outreach, notably with the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences.
The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.
Like so many people around the world, our Oxford Mathematics students are in the middle of the exam season.
Our fourth year students started at the end of May and finish tomorrow, third year students finish a week later while first and second students are preparing for their exams which start soon and finish on 23 June.
So what will they be revising? Well, for first years, definitely Patrick Farrell's 'Constructive Mathematics' course which focusses on algorithms. If you want to get a flavour of what it is about you can watch the lecture below. It is one of over 80 student lectures on our YouTube Channel.
Best wishes to everyone taking exams, wherever you are. They will soon be over.
In July 2022 Oxford Mathematician James Maynard received the Fields Medal, the highest honour for a mathematician under the age of 40, for his groundbreaking work on prime numbers.
In this Oxford Mathematics Public Lecture which took place in May at London's Science Museum, he explains the fascinations and frustrations of the primes before sitting down with Hannah Fry to discuss his work and his life, from the non-conformist child to the young prodigy in his twenties and the acclaimed star in the field that he is today (in his thirties...). And alongside the successes are the stories of dead-ends and doubt.
The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.
Frances was recognised for "techniques that have been used by theoretical physicists searching for mathematical descriptions of our universe." Frances specialises in 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 Kirwan studied mathematics at Cambridge before taking a DPhil in Oxford under the supervision of Michael Atiyah. She was a Junior Fellow at Harvard before returning to Oxford where a successful career culminated in her appointment as Savilian Professor of Geometry, one of the oldest Chairs in the University. She is a fellow of New College.
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 and received the Sylvester Medal from the Royal Society in 2021.
There's much debate about inspiring a greater appreciation for mathematics. Art has a key role.
Plosion 1 (Yellow) is the 40th and final piece in the mathematically inspired exhibition that is Conrad Shawcross' Cascading Principles: Expansions within Geometry, Philosophy, and Interference.
Whereas the other 39 works are placed in the public and private areas of the Andrew Wiles Building, home to Oxford Mathematics, Plosion sits outside, between the Andrew Wiles Building and The Radcliffe Humanities Building, appropriate for a work that combines artistic flair with mathematical precision.
We are delighted to announce our first Maryam Mirzakhani Scholar. Marta Bucca (pictured) will join Oxford Mathematics in October as a postgraduate student in the Mathematical Physics Group, to carry out research on String Theory under the supervision of Professor Mark Mezei.
The Maryam Mirzakhani scholarship has been enabled by philanthropy, including a £2.48m gift from founding and principal donor XTX Markets. It was launched in memory of Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani who, in 2014, became the first female mathematician to win the Fields Medal, the most prestigious prize for a mathematician under the age of 40.
The Maryam Mirzakhani Scholarship aims to address the disproportionately low levels of representation of women applying for and completing postgraduate degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Nationally, only 29 per cent of postgraduate research students identify as female, according to figures from HESA.
The gift from XTX Markets has led to further donations and together they have endowed fully funded scholarships for female students of any nationality to complete a standard four-year DPhil in Mathematics at Oxford’s Mathematical Institute.
James Sparks, Head of the Mathematical Institute, said: "Our first Maryam Mirzakhani scholar marks an important step in our commitment to widening female participation at postgraduate level in the Mathematical Institute. We look forward to welcoming Marta to the Mathematical Physics research group in the autumn. I would like to express my thanks to XTX Markets and our other funders for so generously funding the scholarship scheme."
James is recognised as one of the leading figures in the field of number theory. Much of his career has focused on the study of general questions on the distribution of prime numbers. His early research was on sieve methods and gaps between prime numbers and as a postdoctoral researcher in Montreal he developed a new sieve method for detecting primes in bounded length intervals, and settled a long-standing conjecture of Paul Erdős on large gaps between primes. Subsequently he showed the existence of infinitely many primes missing any given digit (for example, 7).
More recently, James has developed a growing interest in questions about Diophantine approximation, and in joint work with D. Koukoulopoulos he settled the Duffin-Schaeffer conjecture and dramatically improved upon the work of Schmidt concerning simultaneous approximation by rationals with square denominator. Most recently, improving on classical work of Bombieri, Friedlander and Iwaniec, he published a monumental series of works on the distribution of primes in residue classes which goes beyond what follows from the Generalised Riemann Hypothesis.
James Maynard grew up in Chelmsford, Essex and did his undergraduate studies at Queens' College, Cambridge before moving to Oxford to do a DPhil under the supervision of Roger Heath-Brown. He is now a Professor of Number Theory in Oxford and a Supernumerary Fellow at St John's College.
For his research in number theory, James was awarded the Fields Medal in 2022, the most prestigious prize for a mathematician under the age of 40. He is the recipient of many other prizes including the 2023 New Horizons Prize for Early-Career Achievements in Mathematics.
James said of his election: "I'm delighted to be elected as a fellow of the Royal Society! It is a great honour and amazing to have my name alongside many of the most famous scientists and mathematicians throughout history (as well as several of my esteemed colleagues in Oxford), people I was inspired by as a child starting to get an interest in mathematics."
Oxford Mathematics now has 32 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, Jim Murray, John Ockendon, Roger Penrose, Jonathan Pila, Graeme Segal, Endre Süli, Martin Taylor, Ulrike Tillmann, Nick Trefethen, Andrew Wiles, and James himself, of course.
It is with huge sadness and a profound sense of loss that we must announce that Vicky Neale, teacher, advocate, inspiration and much loved colleague, died on May 3 after a long illness.
Vicky is well known to many people in the mathematical community and beyond, from fellow academics to the many schools that she visited and, most of all, through her many lectures, talks and films. Her digital footprint is a fitting and wonderful legacy.
We pass our condolences to her family, her friends and to all of you who have lost a champion for our wonderful subject.
Last year Vicky made a series of podcasts on the subject of Maths + Cancer with fellow mathematicians and scientists such as David Spiegelhalter and Hannah Fry. You can listen to them all here
We are pleased to announce that Oxford Mathematician Alison Etheridge has been elected as an international member of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States.
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a private, nonprofit organisation of the leading researchers in the US and beyond. The NAS recognises and promotes outstanding science through election to membership; publication in its journal, PNAS; and its awards, programs, and special activities. Through the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the NAS provides objective, science-based advice on critical issues.
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 and was, last month, elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
