In April 2010 the UK mathematics community is coming to Edinburgh for the joint meetings, British Mathematics Colloquium and British Applied Mathematics Colloquium. The collective name is Maths2010 and ICMS is pleased to be involved in the planning and organisation of this major event in the mathematics calendar. The meeting will begin on Tuesday 6 April 2010 and end at midday on Friday 9 April 2010.
Maths201o boasts an impressive line up of invited speakers:
Superplenary Talks
Emmanuel Candes (Stewartson lecture), Stanford University
Darryl Holm (Lighthill lecture), Imperial College
Robert MacKayWarwick University
L Mahadevan Harvard University
Maciej Zworski University of California at Berkeley
Main BMC Speakers
Christopher Hacon, University of Utah
Jeffrey Lagarias, University of Michigan
Gigliola Staffilani, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Main BAMC Speakers
Philip Maini, Oxford University
Eric Vanden-Eijnden, New York University
A recent feature of the British Applied Mathematics Colloquium has been the Meet the Mathematicians day and 2010 is no exception. On 7th April 2010, the Royal Society of Edinburgh will be the venue for this day of activities for older school students. The students will be able to discover what working mathematicians do and some of the fascinating places a degree in mathematics can take them. For more information about this and previous Meet the Mathematicians days see the web pages at www.meetmaths.org.uk
The ESF has slightly modified its Open Call for Mathematics Conferences. One can now apply for conferences to be held in 2011 and in 2012.
Next year’s call will be for conferences to be held in 2012 and 2013.
ICMS are hosting a public lecture at 15 South College Street at 18.00 on the 21st July. The lecture deals with two Darwinian engimas – the nature of a species and the nature of life (see below for further details) – and is given by Marc Van Regenmortel from the University of Strasbourg.
Tickets are free but must be reserved in advance by e-mail to h.bridle@icms.org.uk or by ringing 0131 220 1777.
The intellectual revolution generated by Darwin’s On the Origin of Species published in 1859 caused the overthrow of some of the most basic beliefs of his age. Darwin replaced the belief in the individual creation of unchanging species by the concept that all life descended from a common ancestor and that humans were not separate from the rest of life nor were the special products of a benevolent deity.
Although evolution implies speciation, i.e. changes from one species to another, Darwin never clarified what he meant by species and he took the view that species were only artificial combinations made for convenience. It is remarkable that even today, the nature of species remains a highly controversial issue in biology.
Although Darwin accepted that all organisms on Earth descended from asingle origin of life, he never discussed the nature of living organisms. Life is not a material entity, a force, a property but a concept which has as its referents all living systems, past, present and future. All living systems possess the property of being alive and the concept « life » corresponds to the abstract, mental representation of this property. Instead of analyzing the concept « life », it is more interesting to ask what are the characteristics of living organisms that give them the property of being alive.
Yesterday’s Movie Café on BBC Radio Scotland included a review of the newly released Spanish film Fermat’s Room by ICMS Communications Officer Madeleine Shepherd. The review took the form of a short interview which also covered the wider subject of maths in film.
The programme is currently available on the BBC listen again service and the interview is around thirty minutes into the programme.
ICMS and the Royal Society of Edinburgh present a public lecture on the epidemiology of malaria.
Professor Charles Godfray of Department of Zoology at University of Oxford will discuss worries that mosquitoes are developing insecticide resistance and look at control strategies, some involving mosquito pathogens, others novel genetic techniques. He will show how mathematical and computer modelling is used as a tool to explore which strategies may have the greatest impact in reducing disease.
The event takes place at 6pm on 17 June in the Royal Society of Edinburgh at 22 George Street, Edinburgh. Tickets are free but must be reserved in advance. Please telephone the ticket line on 0131 240 2780 or visit http://www.royalsoced.org.uk/events to reserve a ticket.
More information is available on the ICMS website.
(Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajc1/3420714787/ used under a Creative Commons licence.)
ICMS had the great pleasure of hosting the workshop Geometry and Physics: Atiyah80 from 20-22 April in celebration of the 80th birthday of Sir Michael Atiyah, OM, FRS, FRSE which took place on 22 April.
The workshop delegates on 22 April 2009. Sir Michael Atiyah is in the front row, fourth from the right. To his left in the blue sweater is Peter Higgs, who is also the subject of the painting in the background. (photographer: Thomas Koeppe)
Around one hundred and sixty of Sir Michael’s collaborators, former students and colleagues gathered for three days of academic presentations and discussions focused on the outcomes of his wide ranging mathematical career.
One highlight of the meeting was the talk on 21 April by Mike Hopkins of Harvard University on the Hill-Hopkins-Ravenel solution of the Kervaire invariant one problem. If you want to follow this up then following resources are among those available:
The Tuesday evening saw a public event at the Royal Society of Edinburgh with Sir Michael, Peter Higgs, Edward Witten and David Saxon discussing the Higgs boson in theory and experiment. The public interest was overwhelming. The Society filled both its lecture theatre and a further meeting room with video feed with an audience of around 300 people.
Sir Michael’s birthday and surrounding events also attracted interest from the press resulting in articles in:
N is a Number - panel discussion: (l to r) Tim Johnson, Chris Eilbeck, Andrew J Wilson.
Last night saw the final screening in the Maths at the Movies season for 2009. An almost full-house were treated to a rare cinema showing of N is a Number George Csicsery’s classic documentary portrait of Hungarian mathematican Paul Erdös. This was followed by a discussion of all three films in the series and how mathematicians are percieved by the media in general.
Panellists Andrew J Wilson and Tim Johnson were united in their opinion of The Oxford Murders as a slight murder mystery within a caricature of the mathematical community. By contrast 21 was considered a much better piece of work, in terms of storytelling, realistic character portrayal and mathematical content. The probabilistic approach to “gambling maths” in 21 led to comparison with the current financial crisis and a fine exposition from Tim on how the banks got it wrong – by misidentifying the process of mathematics as an absolute solution.
Many a mathmatician is disappointed in the regular depiciton of eccentricity, and sometimes madness as a prerequiste for mathematical ability. This issue was addressed by Andrew, saying that the nature of dramatic narrative requires something out of the ordinary to create a story. However, we should not lose sight of the supporting cast of mathematicians who populate these films. From pure fiction to documentary, they constitute the background of normality against which the eccentric character’s tale is told.
The audience participation was lively, well-informed and wide ranging, exploring maths education, mainstream film and television portrayals of science and maths and finally throwing up some novel ideas for scripts.
This event was a successful end to a successful season of mathematical films and talks at the 21st Edinburgh International Science Festival. ICMS thanks all those who made it so – Filmhouse and Festival staff, speakers, panellists and event chairs, sponsors and, most of all, the audiences.
Allen Knutson demonstrates a juggling trick during his talk.
Maths is not always the best choice of topic to attract large audiences but 180 people filled the lecture theatre (twice!) for ICMS’ public lectures last night. These events were the centre piece of our contribution to the 21st Edinburgh International Science Festival and we were thrilled to be able to share our passion for maths with so many people.
Two very different speakers demonstrated their applications of maths to the “entertainment industry” much to the delight of the crowd.
Allen Knutson, The Juggling Mathematician (left), described what has become a standard way of notating juggling tricks and how it can be used to explore new possibilities in his art, interspersed with dazzling displays of dexterity (in both hand and footwork!). Among other things, he showed us the infamous “baby juggling” trick, substituting a shoe as no babies volunteered from the audience. The trick involves juggling with standard balls and one awkwardly shaped object. Using the notation it is easy to work out where to insert the object to make the routine work easily and with comic effect.
David Baraff answering audience questions after his talk.
David Baraff, Senior Animation Scientist at Pixar (below left) followed Allen with an insight into the mathematical models that underlie such captivating films as Monsters Inc and Ratatouille. David’s speciality is realistically simulating the movement of hair and cloth. He and his team do this so well that we often take for granted the attention to detail in these animations. However every fold in every costume in every frame has to be described by David’s models – no wonder he won an Academy Award for it!
David also gave a short introduction to a screening of Ratatouille earlier that day at Filmhouse Cinema and was interviewed on Forth 2 in the morning.
For the slides from the Juggling Mathematician talks, background links about Pixar animation and more information about all ICMS events at the 2009 Science Festival see the page on our website (links are in the sidebar).
Filmhouse Cinema's box office board showing that we'v filled the hall
The first film in the Maths at the Movies series was screened last night to a full house. This murder mystery set in the Oxford mathematical community of 1993 kept the audience guessing to the end – and not just about why the scriptwriters saw fit to change Fermat to Bormat!
Following on from this film we are showing 21 on Thursday 9 April 5.45pm. Another gripping tale, this time based on the true story of how some gifted mathematics students were coached not only in playing blackjack but in all the other skills needed to be big winners in Las Vegas. Why did they do it – to get rich quick, to get into medical school or just because they could?
There are still tickets available for 21 but don’t leave it too late in case we repeat yesterday’s sucess! Visit www.filmhousecinema.com to book tickets online.
If you want to know more about Maths in the Movies in general visit the ICMS website.
This is the news blog for the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences. It provides news stories for our main web site at www.icms.org.uk.
If you are looking for information about ICMS workshops or our other activities please visit www.icms.org.uk.
