Maths on the Move

22:02

The Gömböc revisited

Maths on the Move ·

2024/10/01

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 revisit an interview with Domokos from all the way back in 2009. We were reminded of this interview

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25:14

What are groups and what are they good for?

Maths on the Move ·

2024/09/24

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 walking around on a field, and why group theory is often called the study of symmetry. He also marvels

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19:29

The ECM 2024: Avi Wigderson

Maths on the Move ·

2024/09/17

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 interviews as part of our podcast. First up is the eminent Avi Wigderson, who has won many prestigious

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27:29

The origin of life: On Earth and elsewhere

Maths on the Move ·

2024/09/10

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 this episode of Maths on the move we talk to Livio about the new book. From creating life in the lab to

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19:03

The secret to a happy summer: Seville, causality and...

Maths on the Move ·

2024/07/24

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 Avi Widgerson – winner of the Abel Prize in 2021 and the most recent Turing Prize. Justin told us about how

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24:07

On the mathematical frontline: Modelling behaviour

Maths on the Move ·

2024/07/16

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 the messiness of human behaviour? To find out we talk to mathematicians Kirsty Bolton, Assistant Professor

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11:19

Euromaths: Maryna Viazovska

Maths on the Move ·

2024/06/26

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 Euromaths, a miniseries of podcasts revisiting interviews with Fields Medallists who previously won an EMS prize. This

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12:11

Euromaths: Artur Avila

Maths on the Move ·

2024/06/19

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 Euromaths, a miniseries of podcasts revisiting interviews with Fields Medallists who previously won an EMS prize. This

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08:50

Euromaths: Alessio Figalli

Maths on the Move ·

2024/06/11

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, a miniseries of podcasts revisiting interviews with Fields Medallists who previously won an EMS prize. This

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16:43

Euromaths: James Maynard

Maths on the Move ·

2024/06/04

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 Euromaths, a miniseries of podcasts revisiting interviews with Fields Medallists who previously won an EMS prize

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16:13

Euromaths: Hugo Duminil-Copin

Maths on the Move ·

2024/05/21

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 noticed that quite a few winners of EMS prizes later go on to win a Fields Medal, one of the highest honours in

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17:30

The murmuration conjecture: finding new maths with AI

Maths on the Move ·

2024/05/15

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 of Mathematical Sciences about his recent work on the evocatively titled murmuration conjecture. This

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21:02

Tying together black holes, quantum gravity and...

Maths on the Move ·

2024/05/07

"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 achievements in the last century. Yang-Hui He (Photo Rajarshi Maiti – CC BY-SA 4.0) You can find out more about

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33:47

The art of maths and the maths of art

Maths on the Move ·

2024/04/30

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 place at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge. We find out about the rich

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12:49

Ramanujan: Dream of the possible

Maths on the Move ·

2024/04/23

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 today, in areas you'd never imagine are linked to number theory. An example is the study of black holes,

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24:13

Celebrating spring with new shoots of mathematics

Maths on the Move ·

2024/04/16

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 articles: A tip of the hat: Celebrating an aperiodic monotile — meeting the discoverers of the

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23:18

How physics can help AI learn about the real world

Maths on the Move ·

2024/04/09

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 meetings of our colleagues from Maths4DL (the Mathematics for Deep Learning research group) as they explore this

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24:06

The force awakens: Quantum collisions

Maths on the Move ·

2024/03/26

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 brilliant colleague Julia Hawkins herded academics and volunteers, juggled props and generally made sure that

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19:59

It's all connected – climate change and the spread of...

Maths on the Move ·

2024/03/12

We’re now all very aware that climate change is not just a problem for the future – 2023 was officially the hottest year on record ever. And as well as impacting our lives through food security, flooding and drought, climate change can also impact our health by the impact it can have on the spread of diseases.A very interesting group of people came together to discuss this in January 2024. Policy makers, climate scientists, epidemiologists and mathematicians met at a workshop at the University of

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27:15

Reduce, remove, refreeze: Repairing the Earth's climate

Maths on the Move ·

2024/03/05

Could we make the clouds brighter so they reflect more of the Sun's warming rays back into space to keep us cooler? Or make Arctic ice thicker so it lasts longer over the summer? These ideas might sound slightly fantastical, but they're active research areas at the Centre for Climate Repair which has recently become our neighbour here at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge.In this episode of Maths on the move the Centre's Director of Research, Shaun Fitzgerald, tells

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