Here’s a round-up of mathematical news stories from last month.
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Mathematical Objects: Space-filling curves
A conversation about mathematics inspired by a space-filling curve. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.
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Mathematical Objects: Low bridge sign with Adam Townsend
A conversation about mathematics inspired by a low bridge sign. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Adam Townsend.
The plot discussed around 11 minutes and various other photos are available on Adam’s Height Hunt website (spoilers for the episode’s twists and turns!).
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Aperiodical News Roundup – August 2024
Here’s a quick round-up of some news stories from this month.
Awards
The Royal Society has announced its award winners for 2024, which include mathematicians Ingrid Daubechies (Bakerian Medal/lecture for the physical sciences), Hannah Fry (David Attenborough Award/lecture for public engagement) and Philip Maini (Sylvester medal for mathematical research).
And the joint IMA/LMS Christopher Zeeman Medal for 2024 has been awarded to Brady Haran for his work in communicating mathematics via the Numberphile channel on YouTube.
Other news
The Protect Pure Maths campaign group has relaunched as the Campaign for Mathematical Sciences, encompassing a broader remit to promote and support mathematical activity in the UK.
In research news, an elliptic curve with rank at least 29 has been found by researchers Noam Elkies and Zev Klagsbrun. The previous record was rank ≥28, found by Elkies in 2006. (via Robin Houston)
\[y2 + xy = x3 – 27006183241630922218434652145297453784768054621836357954737385x + 55258058551342376475736699591118191821521067032535079608372404779149413277716173425636721497\]
Pierre Cartier, mathematician and Bourbaki member, has died aged 92.
In this series of posts, we’ll be featuring mathematical video and streaming channels from all over the internet, by speaking to the creators of the channel and asking them about what they do.
We spoke to Jon Chase, aka Oort Kuiper the Science Rapper, about his TikTok channel and how he’s been using it to share mathematical raps.
Aperiodical News Roundup – June/July 2024
Here’s a round-up of some news we didn’t cover on the Aperiodical in the last couple of months.
Aperiodical News Roundup – May 2024
Here’s a round-up of some of the mathematical news we saw last month.
Maths News
Thomas Hales and Koundinya Vajjha have claimed a proof of Mahler’s first conjecture, that the most unpackable centrally symmetric convex disk in the plane is a smoothed polygon. (via Greg Egan)
There’s also a been a proof of the geometric Langlands conjecture published, as outlined in this New Scientist article.
Zhouli Xu has claimed a proof of the Kervaire invariant one problem in dimension 126. (via Kyle Ormsby)
And finally, Hidetoshi Mino has counted all the magic squares of order 6. Up to rotations and reflections, there are 17,753,889,197,660,635,632. (via Walter Trump)
Awards and Appointments
The inaugural Jean-Pierre Demailly Prize for Open Science in Mathematics has been awarded to zbMath Open, “for its broad scope, recent policy changes, and commitment to accessibility and sustainability”. (via the European Mathematical Society)
It’s been announced that the first President of the newly-formed Academy for the Mathematical Sciences (AcadMathSci) will be Professor Alison Etheridge OBE FRS, a professor in Probability at the University of Oxford, and a world expert on stochastic processes and their applications. She will take up the role on 17 June 2024.
The Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences 2024 has been awarded to Peter Sarnak, “for his development of the arithmetic theory of thin groups and the affine sieve, by bringing together number theory, analysis, combinatorics, dynamics, geometry and spectral theory.” (via Paysages Mathématiques)
Other News
“Des chiffres et des lettres”, the French gameshow on which Countdown is based, has been cancelled after more than 50 years. (via Sarah Dal)
The UK Government has issued a call for £6m funding to set up a National Academy focused on Mathematical Sciences (NAM). Confusingly, this isn’t the same thing as the fledgling Academy for the Mathematical Sciences (AcadMathSci), though AcadMathSci may well bid to become the NAM. Clear?
And sadly, award-winning mathematician and co-founder of the Simons Foundation Jim Simons has died. (via Alberto Ramos)