It was announced this morning that mathematician and codebreaker Alan Turing has been posthumously granted a pardon for his conviction in 1952 for gross indecency. The pardon is issued under the Royal Prerogative of Mercy by the Queen, after intervention from justice secretary Chris Grayling. The conviction was at the time standard for persons found to be practising homosexuals, and was applied to more than 50,000 cases. Turing’s punishment was chemical castration, although many others in his situation were sent to prison.
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- The Pólya Prize – awarded in recognition of outstanding creativity in, imaginative exposition of, or distinguished contribution to, mathematics within the United Kingdom.
- The Fröhlich Prize – awarded for original and extremely innovative work in any branch of mathematics.
- The Senior Anne Bennett Prize – for work in, influence on or service to mathematics, particularly in relation to advancing the careers of women in mathematics.
- The Senior Berwick Prize – in recognition of an outstanding piece of mathematical research actually published by the Society during the eight years ending on 31 December 2013.
Maths and Magic on BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 put out a rather nice 30-minute documentary on the links between maths and magic recently. In Maths and Magic, Jolyon Jenkins explains a couple of simple algebraic ‘mind-reading’ tricks, before talking to various magicians and mathematicians in search of a mathematical trick that doesn’t ‘look’ mathematical. Regular readers of this site will recognise a few of the mathematicians featured in the programme.
I’m now a bit miffed that I managed to miss Jolyon at the big MathsJam in November, because the trick he ends with is the easy version of the de Bruijn trick that David and I made better last year.
Listen: Maths and Magic on BBC Radio 4.
Persi Diaconis lecture: “The Magic of Martin Gardner”
The one and only Persi Diaconis is going to give a lecture on Martin Gardner at Queen Mary University of London next April. Exciting!
As part of the 2014 British Mathematical Colloquium, join Professor Persi Diaconis, mathematician and former professional magician to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Martin Gardner, with a lecture on the life, work and magic of this famous populariser of mathematics and science.
Martin Gardner brought mathematics to life for millions of people from homemakers to professional mathematicians. Professor Diaconis will try to explain what he did and how he did it. From Alice in Wonderland, Psychic exposures, bad poetry, the Game of Life, public key cryptography and a thousand other things, his clarity and curiosity are contagious. But, beware–as someone once wrote:
WARNING: Martin Gardner has turned dozens of innocent youngsters into math professors and thousands of math professors into innocent youngsters.
The hour-long lecture will take place at 18:30 on the 7th of April, 2014, in the Great Hall of QMUL’s People’s Palace.
More information
The Magic of Martin Gardner event page at QMUL.
via Ivan Tomasic on Twitter
There’s going to be a film about Ramanujan
The Man Who Knew Infinity was a well-received biography of Srinivasa Ramanujan. Now it’s being made into a film: happy hooray! It’ll star Jeremy Irons as Hardy and Dev Patel as Ramanujan.
That’s all the news about that, for now.
More information
Jeremy Irons to Co-star in ‘The Man Who Knew Infinity’ at Variety.
Irons stars in maths genius biopic in The Belfast Telegraph. (why are all the headlines about the supporting actor?)
The Man Who Knew Infinity in the IMDB.
via Luis Guzman on Google+
NT matters (Wrapping up algebraic numbers)
Aperiodipal Nathan Barker sent me this video by Durham University’s Herbert Gangl, inspired by his number theory course last year.
[youtube url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTFCPnxe9Jc]
I’ll never be able to think about algebraic numbers again without hearing this. Thanks, Herbert! No thanks, Nathan!
Nominations for LMS 2014 prizes open
Another year, another round of LMS prizes. Nominations for the 2014 prizes are now open.
Quoth the LMS:
In 2014, the LMS Council expects to award:
The deadline is the 20th of January, 2014.
More information
Infinite Monkey Maths
The latest episode of BBC Radio 4’s Infinite Monkey Cage took “an irreverent and rational look at numbers, logic and mathematics” and is available to download for a length of time unbounded above in podcast form.
More information
Series 9, Episode 4: “To Infinity and Beyond” on BBC Radio 4.