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What do you want on the front of your Christmas cards? It might seem an idle question, but many companies (and even people) give it serious thought. But surely not mathematicians?  

Well maybe not, but mathematics and mathematicians are very versatile. You could say they are in everything we do. Have a look at our season's greetings e-card, courtesy of Roger Penrose's P1 Tiling and Willam Joseph's design.

Let it snow. 

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Robin Wilson's entire history of mathematics in one hour, as illustrated by around 300 postage stamps featuring mathematics and mathematicians from across the world.

From Euclid to Euler, from Pythagoras to Poincaré, and from Fibonacci to the Fields Medals, all are featured in attractive, charming and sometimes bizarre stamps.

How has mathematics emerged over recent decades as the engine behind 21st century science? Professor Alain Goriely, Statutory Professor of Mathematical Modelling in Oxford, explains how mathematics provides the framework and models from which physicists, chemists, biologists, medics, engineers and economists build an understanding of our world and construct the tools to improve our lives.

In this lecture Sir Roger Penrose describes how crystalline symmetries are necessarily 2-fold, 3-fold, 4-fold, or 6-fold. Yet, in the 1970s, 5-fold, 8-fold, 10-fold and 12-fold, ‘almost’ crystalline patterns were found, often beautiful to behold.

These structures have influenced mathematicians and architects alike, notably in the new Mathematical Institute Building where Roger’s own unique non-repeating pattern adorns the entrance.

Viktor Mayer-Schonberger's Inaugural Oxford-Nie Financial Big Data Laboratory lecture is now online. We should welcome Big Data he argues and all the opportunities it brings, but we should also approach it with humility and humanity. 

Viktor Mayer-Schonberger is Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the University of Oxford's Internet Institute. The Oxford-Nie Financial Big Data Laboratory was made possible by the generous support of Financial Data Technologies Ltd and is located in the Mathematical Institute in Oxford.

Professor Martin Bridson, Whitehead Professor of Mathematics, Vice Chairman of the Mathematical Institute and Fellow of Magdalen College, has been elected to the American Mathematical Society “for contributions to geometric group theory as well as its exposition, and for service to the mathematical community.”  In addition to geometric group theory, Martin's main research interests lie in low-dimensional topology and the study of metric spaces of non-positive curvature.

As you enter the main entrance lobby of the Andrew Wiles Building you are greeeted by Axiom. Created by artist Mat Chivers, the sculpture is the winner of the Mathematical Institute's Sculpture Competition. The competition invited artists to propose, and eventually create, a substantial and artistically significant sculpture to be placed in the main entrance lobby. We would encourage you all to visit and meanwhile allow Mat to explain the work and its construction.

Axiom
2014
Cast aluminium
2.2 x 2 x 1.8 m

‘Axiom’ combines three mathematical ideas - symmetry, asymmetry and entropy - in a sculpture that was made using a combination of hand made and contemporary digital envisioning and fabrication processes.

The complex layering used to develop the sculpture is central to the meaning of the work. The rough quality of some of the areas of the sculpture is a result of digital ‘noise’ resulting from the translation between different modes of fabrication and is intended to act as a memory of the journey through the processes by which it was made.

Alluding to some of the ways that we attempt to understand reality, it is an intentionally open visual proposition, designed to invite interpretation depending on what each viewer sees.

Notes on the process
Six equilateral plywood triangles were physically joined in a symmetrical configuration so that they partially enclose space. Polyurethane foam was then injected into the void which expanded, constrained by the containing geometry.

The resulting object (measuring 20 x 18 x 17 cm) was digitally scanned, resulting in a virtual mesh composed of 4.5 million triangles; the number of polygons in the mesh was then reduced to under seven hundred.

A computer script was applied to the data enabling the mesh to be built as a physical object with the dimensions of the individual triangular profile sections of lattice having a width that is proportional to their length.

A seven-axis robotic milling machine was used to make the full size object in high density polyurethane foam, which was then used as a sacrificial core - encased in plaster and burnt out with molten aluminium. The plaster residue from the casting process remains visible on the surface of the sculpture as a subtle white patination.

Photographs by Quintin Lake

In two radio programmes next week Oxford Mathematics' Whitehead Lecturer Vicky Neale will discuss beauty. In the first Vicky, together with historian of science Simon Schaffer and philosophers Barry Smith and Angie Hobbs, examine the mathematics and morality of beauty together with its evolutionary origins and benefits.

In the second programme Vicky and colleagues Ben Green and Peter Neumann discuss the particular beauty of mathematics, with a specific emphasis on mathematics and music.

Marcus Du Sautoy, Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science in Oxford, will be in Bangladesh to give three presentations to the fourth Hay Festival in Dhaka, 22-24 November 2014. On December 9th he will be in New Zealand as the 2014 Royal Society of New Zealand Distinguished Speaker, talking about the Art of Mathematics in Auckland, and the following day he will be in Nelson to give the Thomas Cawthron Memorial Lecture.

By contrast in the New Year, on January 19th, he will be speaking to the Clacton Arts and Literary Society about the Secret Mathematicians and on 29 January and 3 February he will be talking to GCSE and A level students as part of AIM conferences in London. The conferences are intended to explain the stimulation and pleasure that academic subjects provide and are 'aimed' at students, teachers and the general public.

We are always told that our work envrionment is critical to the work itself. But do mathematicians need a stimulating environment for their work? Or will just a computer and some coffee do?

Andreas Hadjittofis, a Masters Students in Mathematical Modelling and Scientific Computing, believes they do. Watch him describe how the Andrew Wiles Building in Oxford works for him.