Well! I have been quite remiss in writing up the Newcastle MathsJams. The last recap published was for May’s meeting. The end of the year (and associated holiday) is a good time to kick myself up the backside and do the entire second half of the year in one go. So, here’s that.
Alan Turing receives Royal Pardon
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…
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…
Turismo Matemático is five years old
Happy birthday to Turismo Matemático, a happy little blog which has been posting pictures of mathematical objects around the world for five years now. It’s one of my favourite maths blogs; if you weren’t already aware of it, now’s as good a time as any to go and have a look.
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…
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…
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!