Plants use many strategies to disperse their seeds, but among the most fascinating are exploding seed pods. Scientists had assumed that the energy to power these explosions was generated through the seed pods deforming as they dried out, but in the case of ‘popping cress’ (Cardamine hirsuta) this turns out not to be so. These seed pods don’t wait to dry before they explode.

Oxford Mathematician Heather Harrington has been awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship. The fellowships recognise outstanding scientists in the UK who are in the early stages of their research career and have the potential to become leaders in their field.

The Fourier transform is that rarest of things: a mathematical method from over 200 years ago which not only remains an active area of research in its own right, but is also an invaluable tool in nearly every branch of mathematics. Though originally developed by Fourier in 1807 to help solve certain partial differential equations, the transform is a living example of a remarkable feature of mathematics, that a tool created in one sub-discipline can break through these artificial classifications and become vital in another.

Professor Nigel Hitchin FRS, Savilian Professor of Geometry in the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford has won the prestigious Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences for, in the words of the Prize Foundation "his far-reaching contributions to geometry, representation theory and theoretical physics. The fundamental and elegant concepts and techniques that he has introduced have had wide