Latest news

The British Society for the History of Mathematics (BSHM) has announced the winner of the 2013 Neumann Prize. This prize, named after Oxford mathematician and past BSHM President Dr Peter Neumann, OBE, is awarded every two years for the best mathematics book containing historical material and aimed at a non-specialist readership.

The 2013 winner is Jackie Stedall, of Oxford University, for her book The History of Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2012). The nominating committee praised the book as "stimulating, very well written, and very suitable for the 'general reader', also containing many new and perceptive remarks about how to approach the subject". The award was made at a joint BSHM-Gresham College meeting on 31 October.

From composers to painters, writers to choreographers, the mathematician's palette of shapes, patterns and numbers has proved a powerful inspiration. Often subconsciously artists are drawn to the same structures that fascinate mathematicians, as they constantly hunt for interesting new structures to frame their creative process. Through the work of artists like Borges and Dalí, Messiaen and Laban, Marcus will explore the hidden mathematical ideas that underpin their creative output and reveal that the work of the mathematician is also driven by strong aesthetic values.

The Mathematical Institute and Oxford University Press announce the following colloquium:

Professor Kazuya Kato (University of Chicago)

Title: Heights of motives

Date and venue: 15 November, 4.30pm, Mathematical Institute

Abstract: the height of a rational number a/b (a,b integers which are coprime) is defined as max (|a|, |b|). A rational number with small (resp. big) height is a simple (resp. complicated) number. Though the notion height is so naive, height has played a fundamental role  in number theory. There are important variants of this notion. In 1983, when Faltings proved the Mordell conjecture (a conjecture formulated in 1921), he first  proved the Tate conjecture for abelian varieties (it was also a great  conjecture) by defining heights of abelian varieties, and then deducing Mordell conjecture from this. The height of an abelian variety tells how complicated are the numbers we need to define the abelian variety.  In this talk, after these initial explanations, I will explain that this height is generalised to heights of  motives (a motive is a kind of generalisation of abelian variety.) This generalisation of height is related to open problems in number theory. If we can prove finiteness of the number of motives of bounded height, we can prove important conjectures in number theory such as general Tate conjecture and Mordell-Weil type conjectures in many cases.

Colloquia are followed by a reception designed to give people the opportunity to have more informal contact with the speaker. A book display will be available at this time in the common room. The series is funded, in part, through the generous support of Oxford University Press.

The colloquia are aimed towards a general mathematical audience.

For this year’s Charles Simonyi Lecture on Friday 08 November we welcome Ian Lipkin the “World’s Greatest Virus Hunter” (Discover Magazine). Using his experience studying HIV/AIDS, SARS and pandemic influenza, Ian will review how bacteria, fungi and viruses cause illness, why new infections appear and the implications of the emerging field of microbiology.

Ian Lipkin is the John Snow Professor of Epidemiology, Professor of Neurology and Pathology, and Director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University. He was also the scientific consultant for the Steven Soderbergh film Contagion.

Ian Lipkin will be introduced by Marcus du Sautoy, Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at University of Oxford.

This event will take place in the Oxford Playhouse. To book please click here.

OxPDE Visting Professor Richard James has discovered a new shape-changing metal crystal, a prototype of a new family of smart materials that could be used in applications ranging from space vehicles to electronics to jet engines. Called a "martensite", the crystal has two different arrangements of atoms, switching seamlessly between them. The material was discovered by Dick and colleagues at the University of Minnesota as an outgrowth of joint work with Sir John Ball which identified certain mathematical relations which would potentially allow unusual patterns of microstructure.

Watch the video to find out more.

Congratulations to Tom Sanders for winning the prestigious European Prize in Combinatorics. The prize is established to recognise excellent contributions in Combinatorics, Discrete Mathematics and their Applications by young European researchers not older than 35. 

On Wednesday 27 November Professor John Toland from the Issac Newton Institute in Cambridge will give the Seventh Brooke Benjamin Lecture entitled "the fascination of what's difficult: Mathematical aspects of classical water wave theory from the past 20 years.'

Brooke Benjamin believed that mathematical proofs and data from carefully designed and executed experiments were two pillars upon which scientific progress rests. He made distinguished contributions to both.

Experimental observations about steady water waves have famously challenged mathematicians since Stokes and Scott-Russell in the 19th century and modern methods of global analysis are inadequate to answer the simplest of questions raised by careful numerical experiments in the 20th century.

This lecture concerns mathematical advances that have emerged since Brooke's untimely death in 1995 and elucidates important challenges that remain to the present day. Find out more.

Plenty of opportunities to see Marcus in action this autumn:

And as a (rationalist) Christmas treat he will be appearing at Nine Lesson and Carols for Godless People in December at London's Bloomsbury Theatre.

Watch Oxford Mathematicians, from students to teachers, discuss the study of this most beautiful and powerful of subjects. The film explains how to apply, the choices available, your day-to-day mathematical life including the tutorial system and your college life, and the world of opportunities that a maths degrees opens up.

The scientific programme of the International Congress of Mathematicians 2014 has been announced. Many congratulations to Ben Green and Jonathan Pila who have been invited to give two of the plenary lectures, and to Konstantin Ardakov, David Conlon, Terry Lyons and Tom Sanders who have been invited to give section lectures. The ICM 2014 will take place in Seoul, Korea, August 13-21.