A biography of Emmy Noether has been published in the New York Times. Albert Einstein called her the most “significant” and “creative” female mathematician of all time, and others of her contemporaries were inclined to drop the modification by sex. She invented a theorem that united with magisterial concision two conceptual pillars of physics: symmetry…
30th Anniversary LMS Popular Lectures: Gowers and Penrose
The 30th Anniversary LMS Popular Lectures will be given by Professor Sir Roger Penrose, FRS (University of Oxford) and Professor Tim Gowers, FRS (University of Cambridge). The London Mathematical Society Popular Lectures present exciting topics in mathematics (and its applications) to a wide audience. The lectures are suitable for all who have an interest in mathematics. The lectures will held…
On Disreputable Numbers
One would be hard put to find a set of whole numbers with a more fascinating history and more elegant properties surrounded by greater depths of mystery — and more totally useless — than the perfect numbers. — Martin Gardner There are countless ways to classify integers. Happy, perfect, friendly, sociable, abundant, extravagant, cute, interesting, frugal, deficient, hungry, undulating,…
Manchester MathsJam March 2012 Recap
This month’s MathsJam was well attended – we matched last month’s turnout of 11, albeit one of that number was in the form of Ed Bradshaw, the organiser of the Washington DC MathsJam. For Ed, it was 4pm and he was in his office, using Google Plus for a live video connection to a MathsJam…
Put Alan Turing on bitcoins
Following the recent trend for Alan Turing petitions to be filed with the UK Government e-petitions website, and in particular the current Turing bank note petition, a new petition shows a satirical twist: Alan Turing is a national hero. His contribution to computer science, and hence to the life of the nation and the world,…
Math/Maths 90: Maths is to Mathematics as Math is to…?
A new episode of the Math/Maths Podcast has been released. A conversation about mathematics between the UK and USA from Pulse-Project.org. This week Samuel and Peter spoke about: Endre Szemerédi wins the Abel Prize 2012; Automatically tagging the World Service archive; Intel Science Fair; 72nd Putnam; The Spanish link in cracking the Enigma code; Greater…
2012 Abel Prize awarded to Endre Szemerédi
The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has decided to award the Abel Prize for 2012 to Endre Szemerédi (Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, and Department of Computer Science, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA) “for his fundamental contributions to discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science, and in…