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What can fashionable ideas, blind faith, or pure fantasy have to do with the scientific quest to understand the universe? Surely, scientists are immune to trends, dogmatic beliefs, or flights of fancy? In fact, Roger Penrose argues that researchers working at the extreme frontiers of mathematics and physics are just as susceptible to these forces as anyone else. In this lecture, based on his new book, Roger will argue that fashion, faith, and fantasy, while sometimes productive and even essential, may be leading today's researchers astray, most notably in three of science's most important areas - string theory, quantum mechanics, and cosmology. Yet Roger will also describe how fashion, faith, and fantasy have, ironically, also been invaluable in shaping his own work.

Roger will be signing copies of his book after the lecture.

This lecture is now SOLD OUT. Any questions, please email: @email

Self-organization is observed in systems driven by the “social engagement” of agents with their local neighbors. Prototypical models are found in opinion dynamics, flocking, self-organization of biological organisms, and rendezvous in mobile networks.

We discuss the emergent behavior of such systems. Two natural questions arise in this context. The underlying issue of the first question is how different rules of engagement influence the formation of clusters, and in particular, the emergence of 'consensus'. Different paradigms of emergence yield different patterns, depending on the propagation of connectivity of the underlying graphs of communication.  The second question involves different descriptions of self-organized dynamics when the number of agents tends to infinity. It lends itself to “social hydrodynamics”, driven by the corresponding tendency to move towards the local means. 

We discuss the global regularity of social hydrodynamics for sub-critical initial configurations.

Let X be a complex algebraic variety containing a point x. One of the central ideas of deformation theory is that the local structure of X near the point x can be encoded by a differential graded Lie algebra. In this talk, Jacob Lurie will explain this idea and discuss some generalizations to more exotic contexts.

We are increasingly better at predicting things about our environment. Modern weather forecasts are a lot better than they used to be, and our ability to predict climate change illustrates our better understanding of our effect on our environment. But what about predicting our collective effect on ourselves?  We now use tools like Google maps to predict how long it will take us to drive to work, and other small things, but we fail miserably when it comes to many of the big things. For example, the recent financial crisis cost the world tens of trillions of pounds, yet our ability to forecast, understand and mitigate the next economic crisis is very low. Is this inherently impossible? Or perhaps we are just not going about it the right way? The complex systems approach to economics, which brings in insights from the physical and natural sciences, presents an alternative to standard methods. Doyne will explain what this new approach is and give a few examples of its successes so far. He will then present a vision of the economics of the future which will need to confront the serious problems that the world will soon face.
 

Please email @email to register

Puzzling things happen in human perception when ambiguous or incomplete information is presented to the eyes. Rivalry occurs when two different images, presented one to each eye, lead to alternating percepts, possibly of neither image separately. Illusions, or multistable figures, occur when a single image can be perceived in several ways. The Necker cube is the most famous example. Impossible objects arise when a single image has locally consistent but globally inconsistent geometry. Famous examples are the Penrose triangle and etchings by Maurits Escher.

In this lecture Ian Stewart will demonstrate how these phenomena provide clues about the workings of the visual system, with reference to recent research in the field which has modelled simplified, systematic methods by which the brain can make decisions. In these models a neural network is designed to interpret incoming sensory data in terms of previously learned patterns. Rivalry occurs when different interpretations are confused, and illusions arise when the same data have several interpretations.

The lecture will be non-technical and highly illustrated, with plenty of examples.

Please email @email to register

Some models for climate change, the good the bad and the ugly

Modelling climate presents huge challenges for mathematicians and scientists, and has a large effect on policy makers.  Climate models themselves vary from simple to complex with a huge range in between.  But how good and/or reliable are they?

In this talk I will describe some of the various mathematical models of climate that are both used to understand past climate and also to predict future climate.  I will also try to show that an understanding of non-smooth effects in dynamical systems can give us useful insights into the behaviour and analysis of these models.

What are the national maths societies for?  What can they do for us?  What can we do for them?

Featuring representatives from the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, the London Mathematical Society, the OR Society, and the Royal Statistical Society.

What is the point of giving a talk?  What is the point of going to a talk?  In this presentation, which is intended to have a lot of audience participation, I would like to explore how one should prepare talks for different audiences and different occasions, and what one should try to get out of going to a talk.

What is the purpose of journals?  How should you choose what journal to submit a paper to?  Should it be open access?  And how would you like your work to be evaluated?