Maths on the Move

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...

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! One of the interesting things that happens at an ECM is that the European Mathematical Society (EMS) awards ten prizes to mathematicians who are under the age of 35 at the start of the year the prizes are awarded. When looking through  previous winners  we notic...

Artificial intelligence is changing our lives. Many of us use the voice activated features on our phones to recognise, understand and fairly complex speech. Students use ChatGPT to do their homework. And doctors use AI algorithms to help diagnose many diseases from medical data. But how is AI changing the lives of mathematicians? In this podcast we speak to  Yang-Hui He  from the London Institute...

"The 20th century was the interaction of geometry and physics, and the 21st century is the interaction of number theory with physics." This intriguing insight comes from our recent discussion with  Yang-Hui He  from the London Institute of Mathematical Sciences.  Yang told us an amazing story about the flow of ideas between mathematics and physics, that involves some of the most celebrated achieve...

Mathematics is a creative pursuit so it's not surprising that there are communalities between maths and art in all its forms. In this episode we explore the intersection between maths and art with physicist  Andrzej Herczyński  and mathematician  Paul Glendinning . Andrzej Herczyński Andrzej and Paul were two of the organisers of the workshop  Space, scale and scaling in art , which recently took...

One of the most fascinating figures in the history of mathematics was  Srinivasa Ramanujan , a self-taught Indian genius who formed a remarkable relationship with the Cambridge mathematician GH Hardy. Ramanujan was interested in problems in number theory, which are often easy to state, but incredibly difficult to prove. One amazing thing about Ramanujan's work is that it still finds applications t...

In this episode of Maths on the move we look at some favourite pieces of maths we have worked on so far this year. From a revolutionary new tile to new insights in topology, and from fooling cancer cells to bringing mathematical research into the classroom, we hope there's something interesting there for everyone.  To find out more about the topics mentioned in this episode see the following artic...

It's always exciting to have a glimpse at new mathematics and technology as they take shape.  In this podcast we talk to  Georg Maierhofer , from the University of Oxford, about an exciting new idea that is only just emerging  – physics informed neural networks  (PINNs for short) – where you add in the laws of physics to machine learning methods.  We have been able to sit in on a number of meeting...

Last weekend our friends and neighbours at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge put on a great event: the  Mathematics Discovery Day , part of the Cambridge Festival. Among the may hands-on activities, games and pop-up explorations were the hugely popular, and well-attended, workshops for students delivered by our colleagues  Liz and Charlie  from  NRICH . Our brilli...