Here’s a round-up of all the mathematical news from the last couple of months we didn’t otherwise cover here.
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\(-e^{i\pi}\) to Watch: Nils Berglund
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 Nils Berglund, whose YouTube channel features animations and simulations, “to show that mathematics and physics can be beautiful.”
A bit of inspiration from #MathArtMarch
This is a guest post by Elinor, who’s been collecting her favourite maths art from the month of March.
March is a month of change in the UK: the days get longer, the temperature is slowly creeping upwards, and we start to believe that spring may be arriving. Through this month of change I have been really enjoying all the #MathArtMarch posts that have been appearing on Mathstodon and Bluesky.
Aperiodical News Roundup – March 2025
Here’s a round-up of some mathematical and maths-related news that happened in March 2025 that we didn’t otherwise cover on the site.
Aperiodical News Roundup – Jan & Feb 2025
Here’s a round-up of a few news items from the last couple of months not otherwise covered on the site.
Review: The Big Bang of Numbers by Manil Suri
This is a review of the book The Big Bang of Numbers by Manil Suri. We were kindly sent a copy of the book to look at, and Ashleigh Ratcliffe shares her thoughts.
In this book, Suri sets out to build the whole of modern mathematics from its foundations, and has chosen to do this by mirroring the Christian 7-day creation story – along with a persistent running joke about the author’s entirely fictional personal rivalry with the Pope, which at times is slightly distracting. Despite this, it’s a clever conceit and allows the story of creation of maths to unfold gradually.
The author takes a holistic approach to the field of mathematics – the book demonstrates the importance of mathematics in the universe, and how it would not be possible to exist without mathematics. Whilst the main story is about building the universe from mathematics, you also get an idea of the historical building and progress of mathematics as a field. I find it such a beautiful concept that in any universe, we would have maths.
On day 1 (my personal favourite) we have arithmetic. This chapter starts with thinking about what numbers are and why we need them. After constructing sets and numbers, we start playing games with numbers and then obtain the different operations. This is a fun way to approach arithmetic, especially as each number gets its own personality. By the end of day 1, we have the building blocks of the universe.
On day 2, we have geometry. Using our building blocks and some abstract ideas, we make space for the universe. We first get lines, then planes, and then space. The chapters in this section are littered with useful diagrams, images and ideas – such as getting points to act as lights to switch on and off, which in turn create shapes. This is a very imaginative and beautiful concept, and an approach to this topic I have never seen before. We also see appearances of geometry in nature, and some fabulous crochet creations.
On day 3 we have algebra, and we get further in touch with nature. We can view the things we already made, but now in terms of algebra – which surprisingly includes teaching mother nature how to draw!
On day 4 we have patterns, which introduces us the wonderful concept of symmetry. We also meet some more occurrences of maths in nature through the golden ratio, spirals and fractals. On day 5 we have physics, and the idea of spacetime from which we can build a simplistic gravitational model.
On day 6 we have infinity. The author builds an intuition for the concept of infinity through a sci-fi tale featuring Georg Cantor.
Finally, on day 7, we have emergence: the day of rest, where we sit back and admire what we have created. The ending is left open, which aligns with the exploratory and investigative nature of the book. However, as a reader, I felt slightly annoyed to have followed the path of building the universe for it to all then be questioned.
The first few days are very easy to follow and there are nice images and applications of mathematics throughout the book. The importance of mathematics is well portrayed throughout, especially through its occurrences in nature – for a large section of the book, the narrator is mother nature.
The further into the book we get, the more abstract the ideas become and in parts it is hard to follow. Some bits of the story are a little far-fetched, and there were some explanations that I struggled to get my head round – so I would expect it to be hard for a non-mathematician to completely understand, despite the book’s description on publisher Bloomsbury’s website: “an accessible introduction for enthusiastic novices”.
The endnotes have further content for more advanced readers to find/read more details on certain areas or ideas. In my opinion, some things in the text could have been put in the endnotes, and vice versa, allowing the main story to be easier to follow and understand.
Overall, this is a very unique and interesting book and one I very much enjoyed reading. A truly different maths book, which shows mathematics in a different light.
Aperiodical News Roundup – November & December 2024
Here’s a round-up of some news stories from the last two months of 2024, (mostly) not otherwise covered here on the Aperiodical.
Maths Research
At the start of December, John Carlos Baez shared on Mathstodon that the moving sofa problem may have been solved – the question of the largest possible shape you can fit around a 2D corner. For many years, a shape called Gerver’s sofa has been thought to be optimal, but an ArXiV paper from 29th November claims to have proved it is. More context in this blog post by Dan Romnik.
Depending on what you consider to be maths news, there were also reports that mathematicians have discovered a new type of cardinal numbers and a new kind of infinity.
And depending on what you consider to be good news, Terry Tao has also announced the creation of Renaissance Philanthropy and XTX Markets’ AI for Math fund, supporting projects that apply AI and machine learning to mathematics, with a focus on automated theorem proving. The deadline for initial expressions of interest is Jan 10, 2025.
Awards and Appointments
Computer algebra system PARI/GP has been awarded a CNRS prize “Prix science ouverte du logiciel libre de la recherche” (Open Science Awards for Free Software for Research). The awards highlight exceptional or very promising achievements, which can inspire the scientific community as well as society as a whole. An estimated user community of 25,000 people use PARI/GP regularly for research and hobbyist number theory. (via Rémi Eismann on SeqFan)
The other big news from last December was Hannah Fry’s appointment as Cambridge’s new Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics. She joined the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) on 1st January, and the role will involve communicating to diverse audiences, including with people not previously interested in maths. Fry follows in the footsteps of the late John Barrow, who informally took on the same role for much of his distinguished career.
“Communication is not an optional extra: if you are creating something that is used by, or interacts with members of the public or the world in general, then I think it’s genuinely your moral duty to engage the people affected by it. I’d love to build and grow a community around excellence in mathematical communication at Cambridge – so that we’re really researching the best possible methods to communicate with people.”
– Hannah Fry
Other news
From now until 11th February, Young Researcher applications for the Heidelberg Laureate Forum 2025 are open to any undergraduate/pre-master, PhD or PostDoc researchers who would like to join the highest level of mathematical laureates alongside hundreds of other researchers in maths and computer science for a week of talks, workshops and networking in the beautiful city of Heidelberg in September.