These are the show notes for episode 43 of the Travels in a Mathematical World Podcast. 43 is the smallest non-palindromic prime which on subtracting its reverse gives a perfect square. More about 43 from Number Gossip.

This time on the podcast Victor Arulchandran of Brunel University talked to me (in a quite noisy tea room!) about his PhD topic looking at wave dispersion and the wide range of applications of that area of mathematics. Victor’s supervisor is Julius Kaplunov. There is a wealth of information on waves and dispersion in the Dispersive PDE Wiki. There is a page on that wiki detailing dispersion relations.

Victor also talks about the skills he is able to acquire during his PhD which will aide his future career aspirations in financial modelling. There is good information on skills employers are looking for in the IMA Mathematics Careers Advice leaflet and more information on postgraduate study at the Maths Careers website.

You can find out more about my work with the IMA by following me on Twitter, reading this blog and visiting http://www.ima.org.uk/student/. Join the Facebook page.