Oxford Mathematics

As children we put a shell to our ear to hear the sea. We should look more closely at the shell's shape.

Nature, full of curved edges, non-flat faces and few, if any, sharp corners, has inspired a new class of mathematical shapes: soft cells.

Read more about this groundbreaking research from mathematicians in Oxford and Budapest. The image is the 'soft' version of a familiar mathematical shape, the truncated octahedron: https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/68734

This is the first slide of the first lecture course for our Oxford Mathematics first year students - 'Introduction to University Mathematics' by the wonderful Ian Hewitt. It is an online primer for what's to come (all other lectures are in-person) and helps them prepare for the move from high school maths to higher school maths.

If you are about to start university mathematics, or are a high school student wondering what it entails, or just want to find out more about a subject that, like it or not, dominates modern day science and more, then here you go. Eight lectures are all yours.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4d5ZtfQonW1xKVEtYJd1iu9m52ATG7SV

So what do you fancy today? Carrollian holograms? The Möbius function? Software to tackle pollution? Additive versus multiplicative structure over integers? A celebration of the many people who have used maths in their everyday lives?

We can do all that and more. We've 100s of research case studies online: pure, applied and all things combined. Link below.

The image is an illustration of Roger Penrose's conformal compactification from the Carrollian holograms case study by one of our researchers. The spacetime boundary is reached by following null directions (in blue). That Roger P gets everywhere.

https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/research/case-studies

Oxford Mathematician and Fellow of St John's College, Oxford Philip Maini has been awarded the Sylvester Medal by The Royal Society for his contributions to mathematical biology.

Pretty good teacher too.

https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/68841
Photo: Robert Taylor/St John's

When our mathematicians need a miracle, or just a break, some visit St Margaret's Well. Situated in St Margaret's Churchyard at the end of a lazy, winding lane just out of Oxford, the waters of the Well were used by Oxford's patron saint, St Frideswide (d. 727) to cure all manner of ills. Very handy if you're stuck with a problem.

And it is not just loved by current Oxford Mathematicians. The Well is also known as Treacle Well, at the bottom of which, according to Oxford Mathematician Lewis Carroll’s 'Alice in Wonderland', dwelt three little sisters, sustained only by treacle. Sweet.

Port Meadow is an ancient area of grazing land on the edge of Oxford that, legend has it, has not been ploughed for 4,000 years. It is home to horses and cows; and Oxford Mathematicians seeking to get away from things, perhaps at sunset, as a paraglider files overhead.

The latest in our summer series about the places we go to escape.

Mathematicians lend their names to theorems. In fact sometimes they don’t so much lend as hand over their entire personality. But behind the name is a life. In Stefan Banach’s case a traumatic one as a Polish man living through World War II.

Banach’s contraction mapping theorem is the topic in the latest student lecture we are making available, part of Patrick Farrell's 'Constructive Mathematics' 1st year course.

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEosQolbJGU

Roger Penrose is 93 today (not a very interesting number, he says), but where in spacetime does a Nobel Prize winner go to get away?

A short walk from Oxford Mathematics are the Trap Grounds, 10 acres of wetland, woodland and grassland where you sit and watch the swans and the deer and the bees and forget about black holes and twistors etc. Or maybe you don't.

The latest in our series on where our mathematicians go to get away.

PS: 93 is a semiprime. Apparently it is also a cake number (nothing to do with cakes). But Roger had never heard of cake numbers. Can't know everything, I guess.

What has this got to do with mathematics? Well, nothing. And everything.

This is Godstow Nunnery (or Abbey), North of Oxford, with its lonely chapel in the far corner. The Nunnery, situated beside the River Thames, was closed by Thomas Cromwell in 1539 and you can now walk in the once hallowed grounds among the wild flowers, surrounded by the still standing stone walls. Which is exactly what our mathematicians do, because this is one of the places they named when we asked them where in Oxford they go to get away from it all. We all need that place. Where's yours?

This is the first in an occasional summer series of places of escape. Happy summer.

Oxford Mathematics quantum information theorist Balint Koczor has been awarded a UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship. These support research and innovation leaders of the future to transcend boundaries between academia and business.

No pressure then.

Find out more about Balint and the Fellowships: https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/68682

Oxford Mathematician Andrew Wiles has been given a Basic Science Lifetime Award for his work on 'Fermat' and its subsequent influence on mathematics and mathematicians.

Colleague Marc Lackenby receives a Frontiers of Science Award for his groundbreaking work in knot theory.

https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/68633

In memory of Vicky Neale, the Clay Mathematics Institute, Oxford Mathematics and XTX Markets have inaugurated a lecture in her name, recognising her contribution to mathematical education. Tim Harford looks at how data built our modern world, and how we can use it to build a better one.

Book: https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/68531