Latest news

With great regret we announce the death, on 30 April 2011, of Daniel Gray Quillen, Waynflete Professor of Mathematics from 1984 to 2006. Details of memorial events will be added in due course.

We are delighted to announce that the Oxford Mathematical Institute Newsletter for 2011 has been sent, and is now available for download using the link below. This issue includes a welcome note from Sam Howison as the new Chair, a short history of the Maths and Philosophy degree, and features a centre page spread on the new Mathematical Institute building. You can also take this opportunity to support the new building using the giving form below, which includes information on how gifts of all sizes can play a critical role -and you can also register for the annual Mathematical Institute Garden Party which is taking place on Saturday 16 July.

• Spring 2011 Newsletter
• Making a Gift
• Summer Garden Party 2011

It was announced on March 22 2011 that Jonathan Pila is to receive a Clay Research Award for his resolution of the André-Oort Conjecture in the case of products of modular curves. This work gives the first unconditional proof of fundamental cases of these general conjectures beyond the original theorem of André concerning the product of two such curves. The foundational techniques that Pila developed to achieve this breakthrough range from results in real analytic geometry which give sharp upper bounds for the number of rational points of bounded height on certain analytic sets, to the use of O-minimal structures in mathematical logic.

The award will be presented at the 2011 Clay Research Conference, to be held May 16-17 at Harvard University in Science Center Lecture Hall A.

Kit Yates recently met with Dr Yan from the BBC1 TV program Bang Goes the Theory to talk about conics.

The video is available on the BBC website

"Risk, Model Risk and Knightian Uncertainty: on the role of probability in finance"

The 2011 Nomura Lecture will be given by Professor Hans Follmer on
Thursday 12 May 2011 at 17:15 hours in the Examinations Schools.

The Mary Cartwright Lecture takes place on Friday 25th February in the University Museum.

A reception will be held after the meeting at the Mathematics Institute followed by a dinner at the Ashmolean Museum.

Full details are available on the poster

The first week long Saudi Arabian Study Group with Industry, organised by OCCAM and KAUST, was held last week at KAUST. Industrial study groups were pioneered in the UK by Oxford in the 1960s and now take place in over twenty countries around the World and have become the premier way of bringing academics and industry together.

Further details are available in [file:saudi-study-group1.pdf=an article from the Saudi Gazette].

Two former DPhil students from the Oxford Mathematical Finance Group, Hualei Chang and Lei Jin, have joined Goldman Sachs.

The IMA Gold Medal is awarded in alternate years in recognition of outstanding contributions to mathematics and its applications over a period of years. This year the medal has been awarded to Nick Trefethen. The medal will be presented on 29 June 2011.

A recent interview with Thomas Woolley on how the stingray got its spots has appeared on the Oxford Science Blog. In the interview they discuss a recently published paper by Thomas Woolley, Ruth Baker and Philip Maini.