Latest news

We continue to expand our social media presence with YouTube shorts being the latest addition. These one-minute (or less) films will often act as a taster for the longer public and students lectures that are already on the Channel, but we will also include the short films that go on other social media platforms. 

They will enable people who don't have access (or prefer not to have access) to social media to watch the many films we make about our mathematicians and their mathematical lives. Here is Professor Pointyhead.

The first of six 'Probability' lectures we are showing, taken from the first year undergraduate course, is now available to watch.

The First Year Probability lectures are for students of Mathematics, Computer Science and joint degree courses between Mathematics and Statistics and Mathematics and Philosophy. First year lectures are supported by lecture notes and complemented by one problem sheet for every two lectures, which students are asked to solve in preparation for discussion in pairs with their tutors in tutorials. 

Lecture 1 takes the intuitive notion of randomness (and perceived randomness) in the real world and introduces mathematical models, in which events that may be observed are captured as sets of possible outcomes to which we can assign probabilities. 

This lecture joins another 85 undergraduate lectures that can be watched via the playlist.

Oxford Mathematician Roger Heath-Brown has been been appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Mathematics and Mathematical Research in the 2024 New Year Honours List.

Roger Heath-Brown is one of the foremost analytic number theorists of his generation. His important works on prime numbers and related topics include, among many others:

- "Heath-Brown's identity", an important way of decomposing the primes into multilinear pieces, used in many other works such as Zhang's work on bounded gaps between primes

- There are infinitely many primes of the form x^3 + 2y^3 (currently the sparsest natural sequence where one can find primes)

- if a is coprime to q, there is always a prime a (mod q) of size < q to the power 5.5

- at least one of 2,3,5 is a primitive root modulo infinitely many primes.

His contributions to solving equations in integers and rationals include, for instance:

- every nonsingular cubic form in 10 variables has a rational point (and 10 is best possible)

- every cubic form in 14 variables has a rational point

- development of "the determinant method"

- breakthrough quantitative results on the number of rational points up to a given height

Roger Heath-Brown was educated at Cambridge (a student of Alan Baker) and moved to Oxford in 1979. He was made FRS in 1993, and was twice a speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians. He remained at Oxford throughout his career, first at Magdalen College and then, upon being promoted to a personal statutory professorship in 1999, at Worcester College. He retired in 2016. Among his many graduate students was James Maynard, who was awarded the Fields Medal in 2022.

Roger said: "Naturally I am thrilled to receive this honour. It is a reflection of the ever growing importance of mathematics in modern life. Indeed, I have been delighted to see the corresponding growth in the subject at Oxford over the past 40 years, and also within Number Theory - my own research area. I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the friendship and support of my colleagues both at Oxford and across the globe. They have made my work a pleasure."

You can watch an interview with Roger by Ben Green on occasion of his retirement (a loose term for a mathematician) .

Here's the answer to yesterday's Christmas puzzle. If you missed it, you can find it here although James Munro recaps it in the answer video below.

In a roasted chestnutshell, it's a story of three kings bringing gifts (sound familiar?). However, they are not all telling the truth. Your job is to work out who is and who isn't telling the truth and what gifts they have really brought.

Not too taxing, easy to digest, just follow the star. Merry Christmas.

Over the past four years we have been making student lectures available to anyone who wants to take a peek at how we teach. You can now watch 85 lectures covering all four years of our undergraduate courses and including some whole courses. Geometry, calculus, number theory, topology, probability and much, much more: take your pick.

Andy Wathen is our guy at the whiteboard in our latest addition, the first lecture in the first year Linear Algebra course (video below). Many more to follow over the next few weeks.

The full playlist is here.

All first and second year lectures are followed by tutorials where students meet their tutor to go through the lecture and associated problem sheet and to talk and think more about the maths. Third and fourth year lectures are followed by classes.

What was your highlight of 2023? 

Without doubt, Conrad Shawcross' exhibition of over 40 mathematically inspired artworks has been one of ours, not only attracting visitors to our building who would not otherwise visit a mathematics building, but also inspiring our mathematicians to think about their own field and work. A gallery of art in a gallery of minds.

So if it was a highlight in 2023 why not reprise in 2024? We are delighted that Conrad has agreed to extend the 'Cascading Principles' exhibition until the summer of 2024. You are all very welcome to visit as most of the works are publicly accessible. Please email @email to arrange a full tour (some of the items are in the private, working parts of the building).

You can read more about the exhibition here

And you can watch a series of four lectures focussed on the exhibition where artists and scientists compare notes on creativity.

The Conrad Shawcross exhibition is generously supported by XTX Markets.

When we needed a design for our Oxford Mathematics merchandise, we thought we didn't have a badge or coat of arms. Until we realised we did. At the entrance to our building is the Penrose tiling, our mathematical coat of arms.

So our designers, the excellent Stephane Harrison and his team at William Joseph, came up with the idea of the exploding tiles. They have now become our unofficial logo (if you can have such a thing), on all our merchandise and materials.

You can now sample our Penrose-inspired swag, from hoodies and fleeces to caps and beanies. And its mathematical Black Friday from today until 27th November. You'll get 15% off by using the code: GREEN15.

In this Oxford Mathematics Public Lecture, Sarah will explore the many connections between mathematics and literature. She'll show the hidden mathematical structures behind everything from poetry to novels, and reveal some of the beautiful mathematical imagery and symbolism in fiction, from simple fairy tales to classics like Moby-Dick. Her goal is to show that not only are mathematics and literature inextricably linked, but that understanding these links can enhance our enjoyment of both. 

Sarah Hart is the the Gresham Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, Professor of Mathematics at Birkbeck, University of London, and author of Once Upon a Prime: the Wondrous Connections between Mathematics and Literature.

Please email @email to register to attend in person.

The lecture will be broadcast on the Oxford Mathematics YouTube Channel on Thursday 14th December at 5pm and any time after (no need to register for the online version).

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.