Maths on the Move

Every now and again, and more often than you'd think, the work of mathematics overlaps with the world of theatre and film. This happened again recently when the  Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences  (INI) organised a staging of the play Diving into math with Emmy Noether. Noether was a pure mathematician whose results made waves far beyond her field. Albert Einstein called her a "crea...

Last Wednesday, March 26, 2025, this year's  Abel Prize  was awarded to the Japanese mathematician  Masaki Kashiwara.  The Abel Prize is one of the most prestigious honours in mathematics. It is awarded every year by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and comes with a prize money of over £550,000. In this episode of Maths on the Move we talk to  Helge Holden , Chair of the Abel Prize Com...

The UK government has recently pledged to put around £14 billion into supporting the development of artificial intelligence over the next few years.  But because AI comes with perils as well as promises, careful policy decision are going to be crucial. In order to make such decision in an informed way, politicians need to interact with the mathematicians and scientist who develop AI. In this episo...

We kick off our latest series of podcasts with an episode of Living proof, produced jointly with the  Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences  (INI). This episode is all about the communication of mathematics to the wider world, which is becoming ever more recognised as a priority within the maths community. We talk to Sara Khan, Communications Manager at the INI, about how this renowned...

Last summer we were lucky enough to attend the  European Congress of Mathematics  (ECM) in Seville, Spain. The Congress sees the award of  several prestigious prizes , including the Otto Neugebauer Prize for the History of Mathematics. In this episode of Maths on the Move we talk to this year's winner of the Otto Neugebauer Prize,  Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze , who has worked on and written about m...

What is as hypnotising as a beautiful goldfish circling its bowl, but can help you understand the way a virus can spread? The answer is one of the beautiful interactive simulations produced by  VisualPDE  ! In this podcast we talk to  Benjamin Walker  from University College London, and to  Adam Townsend  and  Andrew Krause  from Durham University, who together created this online solver of  parti...

Are you thinking of doing a Masters or PhD in maths or another STEM subject but are worried about funding? Then the  Martingale Foundation  might be for you. The Foundation's mission is "to enable and nurture talented individuals from low-socioeconomic backgrounds to thrive within world-leading postgraduate study and become STEM leaders" by providing full scholarships as well as a development prog...

As a PhD student working with the  Maths4DL  research project, Yolanne Lee works on the mathematics that powers artificial intelligence. In this podcast she tells us about what she thinks AI will be able to do in the near future, what it has to do with cats and dogs, and how music provided her first experience of science. We also get to hear her play the piano! To find out more about the topics di...

We're very excited that  Hannah Fry  is coming to join us in Cambridge in January 2025. Fry is a brilliant mathematician, best-selling author, award winning science presenter and host of popular podcasts and television shows. She'll be Cambridge's first Professor for the Public Understanding of Mathematics. In this episode of Maths on the Move Hannah explains how her interest in public engagement...

We all know what data is: bits of information of which in this age of Big Data we have lots of. You might also know what topology is: the study of shapes that considers two shapes to be the same if you can deform one into the other without tearing them or gluing things together. But what is topological data analysis? And how might it help to understand proteins or diseases such as cancer? We find...

We love a game of billiards — or at least the mathematical version of it. It's a dynamical system that's just about basic enough to study but still poses lots of open questions. In this episode of Maths on the Move we talk to Giovanni Forni about chaos, periodicity and the many things we still hope to learn about billiards. We met Giovanni at the European Congress of Mathematics (ECM) in summer th...

As the days in the UK get shorter and darker we continue remembering the brilliant time we had in Seville last summer at the  European Congress of Mathematics  (ECM). In this episode of Maths on the move we talk to one of the mathematicians we met at the ECM, Jessica Fintzen , who won a prestigious  EMS Prize  at the Congress. Jessica tells us how to capture infinitely many snowflakes at the same...

The world is full of networks. We're part of them, our infrastructure is full of them, and there are even networks within our bodies (e.g. made from neurons). This summer the mathematician Richard Montgomery won a prestigious EMS Prize at the  European Congress of Mathematics  (ECM) for his work on the pure maths of networks, also known as graph theory. In this episode of Maths on the move Richard...

David Spiegelhalter, one of our favourite statisticians in the whole world, has a new book out. It's called  The art of uncertainty: How to navigate chance, ignorance, risk and luck  and published by Pelican Books. In this episode of Maths on the Move we talk to David about the book, touching on a huge range of topics — from double yolked eggs and the bay of pigs, to why it's useful to disagree an...

We recently found out why pieces of toast tend to land butter side down. It' because the physical factors at play, including the typical height of breakfast tables and the strength of the Earth's gravity, are just right to allow a piece of toast to perform one flip on its way to the floor: from butter side up to butter side down. The strength of the Earth's gravity is measured by the gravitational...

A Gömböc is a strange thing. It looks like an egg with sharp edges, and when you put it down it starts wriggling and rolling around as if it were alive. Until not so long ago no-one knew whether Gömböcs even existed. Gabor Domokos, one of their discoverers, reckons that in some sense they barely exists at all. So what are Gömböcs and what makes them special? In this episode of Maths on the move we...

Over the summer we've been incredibly lucky to have been working with Justin Chen, a maths student at the University of Cambridge who is about to start his Masters. Justin has done some great work on how to explain the concept of a mathematical group, and group theory as a whole, to non-mathematicians. In this episode of Maths on the move he tells us how groups are collection of actions, akin to w...

This summer we were very pleased to attend the  European Congress of Mathematics  (ECM), which took place in Seville, Spain, in July. We went to lots of fascinating talks and generally enjoyed the mathematical hustle and bustle. We also interviewed a range of interesting mathematicians about topics as diverse as mathematical billiards and topological data analysis, and we now bring you these inter...

Is there life elsewhere in the Universe? And how did life emerge here on Earth? These two questions are often considered separately, but answers to one shed important light on answers to the other. In their new book  Is Earth exceptional: The quest for cosmic life , renowned astrophysicist  Mario Livio  and Nobel laureate  Jack Szostak  combine both these question and find fascinating answers. In...

We're getting excited for the summer here but before we all head off on holidays we catch up with Marianne in Spain at the  European Congress of Mathematics , and Justin and Rachel in the UK having just attended some fascinating events in London and Cambridge held by the  Isaac Newton Institute of Mathematical Sciences  and the  Newton Gateway . Marianne told us about her recent interview with  Av...

How we behave can have far greater impacts than just on our own daily lives.  For example  who we interact with  and whether  we get vaccinated  affects how diseases spread through the community.  So if we are going to use maths to try to understand such a challenge facing society, we need to make sure we include human behaviour in our mathematical models.  But how do you mathematically describe t...

We're very excited to be going to this year's  European Congress of Mathematics  (ECM), which will take place in Seville, Spain, in July! We noticed that mathematicians who  win one of the prizes  awarded at the ECM by the European Mathematical Society quite often go on to win a  Fields Medal , one of the highest honours in mathematics. So to celebrate the run-up to the ECM we've launched Euromath...

We're very excited to be going to this year's  European Congress of Mathematics  (ECM), which will take place in Seville, Spain, in July! We noticed that mathematicians who  win one of the prizes  awarded at the ECM by the European Mathematical Society quite often go on to win a  Fields Medal , one of the highest honours in mathematics. So to celebrate the run-up to the ECM we've launched Euromath...

We're very excited to be going to this year's  European Congress of Mathematics  (ECM), which will take place in Seville, Spain, in July! We noticed that mathematicians who  win one the prizes  awarded at the ECM by the European Mathematical Society quite often go on to win a  Fields Medal , one of the highest honours in mathematics. So to celebrate the run-up to the ECM we've launched Euromaths,...

We're very excited to be going to this year's  European Congress of Mathematics  (ECM), which will take place in Seville, Spain, in July! And we noticed that mathematicians who  win one the prizes  awarded at the ECM by the European Mathematical Society quite often go on to win a  Fields Medal , one of the highest honours in mathematics. So to celebrate the run-up to the ECM we've launched Euromat...