Here’s a round-up of some news from the last couple of months.
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- Sheila Bird becomes a Dame for services to statistics.
- I. David Abrahams, Professor University of Cambridge. Appointed CBE for services to mathematical sciences.
- Rachel Hilliam, Professor and Head of School of Mathematics and Statistics, Open University. Appointed OBE for services to data science.
- Rashmi Mantri, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, British Youth International College. Appointed OBE for services to mathematics education.
- Sanjiv Mahajan, Supporting Editor, 2025 United Nations System of National Accounts. Appointed MBE for services to Economic Statistics.
- Terence Tao, Professor of Mathematics, UCLA. Appointed Companion of the Order of Australia for eminent service to the mathematical sciences, to the global mathematics community, and to tertiary education and academia.
- Kaye Stacey, Emeritus Professor, University of Melbourne. Appointed Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to tertiary and secondary education, and to mathematics.
- Professor Dwight Barkley FRS (University of Warwick)
- Professor Francis Brown FRS (University of Oxford)
- Professor Frank Calegari FRS (University of Chicago, USA)
- Professor Mark Chaplain FRSE FRS (University of St Andrews and President, LMS)
- Professor Charlotte Deane MBE FRS (University of Oxford and Executive Chair, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council)
Aperiodical News Roundup – July 2026
Here’s a short round-up of maths news from this month.
The 2026 Fields medals have been awarded to Yu Deng, John Pardon, Jacob Tsimerman and Hong Wang. The Fields Medal is awarded to recognize outstanding mathematical achievement for existing work and for the promise of future achievement, and this year’s winners work across PDEs, symplectic geometry, algebraic geometry, harmonic analysis and measure theory.
Hannah Fry has been awarded the IMU’s Leelavati prize for increasing public awareness of maths. “She has become a voice for mathematics that resonates far beyond the public audience normally interested in science communication. Through a wide range of media – including books, videos, and television programs – she has used outstanding creativity and originality to translate mathematics into a language of wonder and relevance for the public without diminishing its scope and importance.”
A result in braid theory has been proven by a team including Joan Birman, aged 99. The proof “reveals brand new insights into the geometry of braids” and closes the \(n=4\) case of the long-standing question of whether the Burau representation of the braid group is faithful. (via @gregegansf@mathstodon.xyz)
The theme selected for the 2027 International Day of Mathematics is ‘Mathematics, AI and Our Future’. “The theme explores the role of mathematics as the foundation of artificial intelligence and how mathematical ideas shape one of today’s most transformative technologies.”
Aperiodical News Roundup – June 2026
Here’s a round-up of some news from this month not otherwise covered on the site.
Particularly mathematical Birthday Honours 2026
The UK Government have announced the new set of King’s Birthday Honours. Here’s our selection of particularly mathematical entries for this year. If you spot any more, let us know in the comments and we’ll add to the list.
Get the full UK list from gov.uk and the Australian list from gov.au. Spot anyone we’ve missed? Let us know in the comments.
Updated 15/6/26 to add Tao and Stacey, thanks to Alex Corner.
Aperiodical News Roundup – April/May 2026
Here’s a short round-up of maths news stories from the last two months that we didn’t otherwise cover on the site.
Thomas Dieterrich, a representative of the arXiv, has clarified the site’s AI policy – in a Twitter thread (non-Twitter mirror link) he explains that their Code of Conduct states that the an author of a paper posted on the arXiv “takes full responsibility for all its contents, irrespective of how the contents were generated” – meaning that “if generative AI tools generate inappropriate language, plagiarized content, biased content, errors, mistakes, incorrect references, or misleading content, and that output is included in scientific works, it is the responsibility of the author(s)”.
The implications of this are serious – “If a submission contains incontrovertible evidence that the authors did not check the results of LLM generation, this means we can’t trust anything in the paper.
The penalty is a 1-year ban from arXiv followed by the requirement that subsequent arXiv submissions must first be accepted at a reputable peer-reviewed venue”. The responses in the thread include some interesting discussion!
Relatedly, the Leiden Declaration on AI and Mathematics calls on researchers to implement AI use responsibly – including full disclosure when AI tools are used, taking responsibility for AI-generated content published in their name, and ensuring credit is given to sources (which is often difficult if AI surfaces something from its training data without credit). They also have some thoughts about the dangers of publishing results via informal channels like blog posts and social media, rather than through existing journals. You can add your name to the list of signatories if you agree! (via Dave Richeson on Bluesky)
Meanwhile, OpenAI says their model has disproved the planar unit distance conjecture, originally stated by Paul Erdős, which asks “If you place \(n\) points in the plane, how many pairs of points can be exactly distance \(1\) apart?”
Fields medallist Tim Gowers is impressed, saying “This will I think be looked back on as the first time that AI solved a major mathematics problem”. As always, Gil Kalai has blogged about it, including links to several other in-depth writeups – including this interesting take from Eric Hoel.
This year’s intake of new Royal Society Fellows contains a number of mathematicians and maths-adjacent researchers, including:
And finally, Michael Rabin, of the Miller-Rabin primality test (among many other achievements in cryptography and automata theory), has died at the age of 94.
Aperiodical News Roundup – March 2026
Here’s a quick round-up of maths internet news this month!
Progress has been made on the Lonely Runner problem, which concerns when runners of different speeds going round a track will meet up, and has connections to higher-dimensional geometry.
A workshop for queer and trans people in category theory, which has an excellent logo, will take place in Hamburg, 12-14 August 2026. (via tessa on mastodon)
The board of the journal Communications in Algebra have resigned in protest at policies imposed by the publisher, Taylor and Francis – including doubling the number of reviewers needed on each paper, which the board consider to be unsustainable. (via Michael Kinyon)
The arXiv is becoming independent from Cornell University, and is looking to hire a $300k/year CEO.
April sees the start of the Month of Math – 5 weeks of puzzles shared every two days, organised by the Joy of Thinking Foundation.
And finally: weird symbol news! The mystery of the Unicode symbol ⍼ has been solved: it represents azimuth. (via Oscar Cunningham)
Aperiodical News Roundup – February 2026
Here’s a short round-up of mathematical and maths-adjacent news from this month.
The LMS are seeking Outreach Lecturers, who must work in UK HE mathematics, and will receive a two-year post during which they’re expected to deliver talks to a minimum of 4 schools around the UK each year. The talks should be free to the schools, targeted at a minimum 75% schools with a high proportion of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. The post comes with a small honorarium to cover travel and ‘associated costs’, and the deadline for applications is 9th March.
The Royal Society has launched a Women in STEM History Map. They acknowledge there isn’t much on it yet, and have issued a call for help filling it in. (via Noel-Ann Bradshaw on LinkedIn)
Computer scientist Joe Halpern, known for his research on reasoning about knowledge and uncertainty, has died at 72. His book Reasoning about Knowledge is available as a PDF. (via Lance Fortnow on Mastodon)
In a recent issue of DMFT posted here, Colin investigated the connection between Jeffrey Epstein and the Gathering 4 Gardner recreational maths events. (It turns out, he was on their mailing list but never registered to attend).