All talks are to be held in the Winstanley Lecture Theatre, Trinity College, and will begin at 8.30pm with port and orange juice from 8.15pm,unless otherwise stated. Talks are for members only; non-members may join at the door.
Monday, 20th January: Prof. Béla Bollobás (DPMMS):
Ancient Problems Today
Whenever one thinks of problems that have occupied the attention of mathematicians for centuries, number theoretic problems spring to mind: Fermat’s Last Theorem, Goldbach’s Conjecture, and the Twin Primes Conjecture. But, as it happens, there are some problems of geometry which, in various incarnations, have been around for two millennia. In the talk I shall present a number of results about such problems, starting with results obtained in antiquity and the Middle Ages, continuing with theorems of Cauchy and Cayley, and ending with some recent results and unsolved problems. The talk will be accessible to freshmen, but will hold challenges for research students as well.
Monday, 27th January: Prof. Raymond Goldstein (DAMTP):
Synchronization of Cilia
From unicellular green algae to the lining of our respiratory systems are found hair-like appendages, known as cilia, whose coordinated beating results in transport of fluid essential for life. For decades there has been speculation about the origins of the synchronization seen in nature, but it is only recently that theory and experiments (mostly carried out here in DAMTP ) have combined to provide quantitative analysis of this problem. This talk will describe the fascinating stochastic nonlinear dynamics underlying the synchronization problem.
Monday, 3rd February: Prof. Michael Atiyah (University of Edinburgh):
Mathematicians I Have Known
In April 2013 my wife and I opened a picture gallery of 70 mathematicians who had played a key part in our mathematical lives. My lecture will be based on this gallery and I will say a few words about a selection of these mathematicians. It is important to emphasize the human aspect of mathematics.
Monday, 10th February: Prof. David Tong (DAMTP):
TBA
Monday, 17th February: Dr. Helen Mason (DAMTP):
Our Active Sun
The Sun should be at the peak of its activity cycle, but actually it has been rather feeble. Several solar space observatories have been watching the Sun over the past few years: SoHO, Stereo, Hinode, SDO and IRIS . We now have high spatial and spectral resolution images of the Sun, with a high cadence. This talk will review what we have learnt about the active Sun, in particular what we know (and don’t yet know!) about solar active regions and flares, and how they might affect the Earth’s environment (via space weather).
Sunday, 23rd February:
Symposium
Monday, 3rd March: Dr. Mike Tehranchi (Stats Lab):
Fun with Gaussian Measures
The standard normal distribution is probably most famous for its starring role in the central limit theorem. This talk will explore useful and unexpected properties of normal distributions, also known as Gaussian measures, and how they arise in a variety of contexts. A few old open problems will also be discussed.
Monday, 10th March: Dr. Rachel Camina (DPMMS):
Conjugacy Classes in Finite Groups
If we know the sizes of conjugacy classes in a finite group what does this tell us about the group? We will discuss this problem.