Talks Archive | The Trinity Mathematical Society

Below you’ll find details of all TMS talks from 1998 onwards. There’s also a link at the bottom of the page to a file containing a comprehensive listing of nearly all public TMS meetings since its foundation in 1919.

2017-18 | 2016-17 | 2015-16 | 2014-15 |2013-14 |2012-13 |2011-12 | 2010-11 | 2009-10 | 2008-09 | 2007-08 | 2006-07 | 2005-06 | 2004-05 | 2003-04 | 2002-03 | 2001-02 | 2000-01 | 1999-2000 | 1998-99 | Earlier talks & complete listing

2017-18

9 October, 2017: Prof Imre Leader (DPMMS) Infinite Games
16 October, 2017: Dr Andras Zsak (DPMMS) Embedding Structures with Distortion
23 October, 2017: Dr Michael Tehranchi (Statslab) The Prices of Call Options
30 October, 2017: Pub Crawl
6 November, 2017: Dr Jason Miller (Statslab) Random Trees
13 November, 2017: Film Night – “Hidden Figures”
20 November, 2017: Dr Emily Shuckburgh (DAMTP) From Flatland to Our Land – A Mathematician’s Journey through our Changing Planet
27 November, 2017: Mathematical Call My Bluff
22 January, 2018: Dr Sebastian Andres (Statslab) Loop Erased Random Walks, Uniform Spanning Trees and Percolation
5 February, 2018: Dr Holly Krieger (DPMMS) A Tour of the Mandelbrot Set
19 February, 2018: Dr Tim Griffin (Computer Science) Adventures in Algebraic Path Problems
5 March, 2018: Prof Colm-Cille Caulfield (DAMTP) The Mathematics of Spin

2016-17

10 October, 2016: Prof David Tong (DAMTP) The Quantum Hall Effect
14 October, 2016: Prof Béla Bollobás (DPMMS) Polynomials in Combinatrics and Topology
24 October, 2016: Dr Marj Batchelor (DPMMS) The Rewards of Thinking Coalgebraically
31 October, 2016: Prof Jonathan Mestel (Imperial) More Fun than a Barrel of Monkeys
7 November, 2016: Dr Perla Sousi (Statslab) Percolation and Random Walks
14 November, 2016: Prof Imre Leader (DPMMS) Cops and Robbers
21 November, 2016: Dr Bursill-Hall + Dr Forster (DPMMS) Infinitesimals
28 November, 2016: Mathematical Call My Bluff
23 January, 2017: Dr Tamara von Glehn (DPMMS) Logic in other universes
30 January, 2017: Prof John Lister (DAMTP) Stretching, bending, twisting and coiling how to build a fluid-mechanical sewing machine
6 February, 2017: Dr Julia Gog (DAMTP) Hunting for viral packaging signals

2014-15

13 October, 2014: Dr Piers Bursill-Hall(DPMMS)Pythagoras never existed. You have been lied to and all school maths is false
20 October, 2014: Dr Perla Sousi(Statslab)[Notes] A lost man will reach home, but a lost bird will be lost forever
27 October, 2014: Dr Julia Gog(DAMTP)Embarrassing diseases
3 November, 2014: Dr Daniel Baumann(DAMTP)The Quantum Origin of Structure in the Universe
10 November, 2014: Dr James Cranch(Sheffield)Which real numbers are pleasant?
17 November, 2014: Prof Ben Allanach(DAMTP)Possible hints for supersymmetry at the Large Hadron Collider
24 November, 2014: Dr Nathanael Berestycki(Statslab)Emergence of symmetry in planar probability
1 December, 2014: Mathematical Call My Bluff
19 January, 2015: Film NightA Beautiful Mind
26 January, 2015: Prof Tim Gowers(DPMMS)Can interesting mathematics problems be solved systematically?
2 February, 2015: Dr Milan Vojnovic(Microsoft Research)How to divide prize money?
9 February, 2015: Dr Paul Birrell(MRC Biostatistics Unit)The anatomy of an influenza pandemic
16 February, 2015: Dr Henry Wilton(DPMMS)The Banach-Tarski Paradox
23 February, 2015: TMS Symposium
2 March, 2015: Prof Imre Leader & Dr Thomas Forster(DPMMS)This house believes that the continuum is not always a continuum.
9 March, 2015: Dr Eric Lauga(DAMTP)The mathematical life of microbes

2013-14

14 October, 2013: Dr. Piers Bursill-Hall(DPMMS)God, as you know, is a Trinity man, but is She a mathmo?
21 October, 2013: Prof. Imre Leader/Dr. Thomas Forster(DPMMS)[Notes] Does Mathematics need a Philosophy?
28 October, 2013: Dr. Hugh Hunt (Engineering Department)Maths problems in Engineering – Handling Infinity
4 November, 2013: Prof. Tom Körner(DPMMS)Thinking at Random
11 November, 2013: Prof. Jonathan Mestel(Imperial)[Notes]Carry on taking Fluids!
18 November, 2013: Prof. Sheila Bird OBE FRSE(MRC Biostatics Unit)Do Pharmacological Interventions Reduce Drugs-Related Deaths? What Statistical Methods are There – and How Can we Use them to Find Out?
25 November, 2013: Dr. Vicky Neale(DPMMS)Some Unsung Mathematical Heroines
2 December, 2013: Mathematical Call My Bluff
20 January, 2014: Prof. Béla Bollobás(DPMMS)Ancient Problems Today
27 January, 2014: Prof. Raymond Goldstein(DAMTP)Synchronization of Cilia
3 February, 2014: Prof. Michael Atiyah(University of Edinburgh)[Notes & Pictures]Mathematicians I Have Known
10 February, 2014: Prof. David Tong(DAMTP)[Notes] Magnetic Monopoles
17 February, 2014: Dr. Helen Mason(DAMTP)Our Active Sun
23 February, 2014: TMS Symposium [Notes for Dr Goedecke’s talk on PhDs in Mathematics]
3 March, 2014: Dr. Mike Tehranchi(Stats Lab)Fun with Gaussian Measures
10 March, 2014: Dr. Rachel Camina(DPMMS)Conjugacy Classes in Finite Groups

2012-13

8 October, 2012: Dr Piers Bursill-Hall(DPMMS)Why Mathmos Rule the World: Always Have, Always Will
15 October, 2012: Prof. David Spiegelhalter(StatsLab) Numeracy and the Media: is it a Lost Cause?
22 October, 2012: Dr David Acheson (University of Oxford)What’s the Problem with Maths?
29 October, 2012: Dr Julia Gog(DAMTP)Why Biologists Need Mathmos
12 November, 2012: Prof. Ben Green(DPMMS)The Sylvester-Gallai Theorem
19 November, 2012: Prof. Hugh Osborn(DAMTP)Pulling Oneself Up By One’s Bootstraps in Theoretical Physics
26 November, 2012: Mathematical Call My Bluff
21 January, 2013: Dr. Thomas Forster and Prof. Imre Leader(DPMMS)This House Does Not Accept the Axiom of Choice: A Debate
28 January, 2013: Prof. Martin Hyland(DPMMS)Understanding the Lambda Calculus: 40 Years in the Dark
4 February, 2013: Prof. Grae Worster(DAMTP)Marine Ice Sheets
11 February, 2013: Dr. Susan Pitts(StatsLab)Risk and Ruin
18 February, 2013: Dr. Julia Goedecke(DPMMS)Abstraction in Mathematics
24 February, 2013: TMS Symposium
4 March, 2013: Prof. Simon Tavaré(DAMTP)Combinatorics and Cancer
11 March, 2013: Prof. Michael Proctor(DAMTP)So Many Dynamos

2011-12

10 October, 2011: Dr Piers Bursill-Hall(DPMMS)God, as you know, is a Trinity woman
24 October, 2011: Prof Zoubin Ghahramani (Dept. of Engineering)
Probabilistic Learning Machines and the Information Revolution [talk notes]
31 October, 2011: Prof. Béla Bollobás(DPMMS)Long Life Problems
3 November, 2011: Prof Kevin Buzzard(Imperial College)Think locally, Act Globally
21 November, 2011: Dr Natalia Berloff(DAMPT)Superfluid States of Matter: from Superfluid Helium to Polariton Condensates
4 February, 2012: Prof John Lister(DAMPT)Stretching, Bending, Twisting and Coiling; Building a Fluid-Mechanical Sewing Machine. [talk notes]
20 February, 2012: Prof Gabriel Paternain(DPMMS)Contact Geometry in Dynamics: the 3-Body Problem
5 March, 2012: Prof Geoffrey Grimmett(Stats Lab)Y-Δ
12 March, 2012: Prof Timothy Gowers(DPMMS)How to Define Enormous Positive Integers

2010-11

11 October, 2010: Prof Imre Leader(DPMMS)Van der Waerden’s Theorem
25 October, 2010: Dr David Tong(DAMTP)Physics and the Integers
8 November, 2010:()PhD Student Talks
22 November, 2010: Prof Martin Hyland(DPMMS)CANCELLED: Quadratic Algebras and Operads
29 November, 2010: Mathematical Call My Bluff
24 January, 2011: Prof Terence Tao(UCLA Dept of Mathematics)The Universality Phenomenon
7 February, 2011: Dr James Cranch(University of Leicester)Mythical beasts in algebra
21 February, 2011: Prof Martin Hyland(DPMMS)Quadratic algebras and operads
7 March, 2011: Dr Richard Nickl(Statslab)Gauss’ invention of the method of least squares and the normal distribution, and its impact on the mathematical foundations of statistics

2009-10

12 October, 2009: Dr Mike Tehranchi (Stats Lab) [Talk notes]What is Brownian motion?
26 October, 2009: Dr Colm-cille Caulfield(DAMTP)Dimensional analysis and similarity solutions: How to get physics to do mathematics for you
9 November, 2009: Film Night(800th Meeting)N is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdos
23 November, 2009: Dr Gabriel Paternain(DPMMS)Hydrodynamics and contact topology
30 November, 2009: Mathematical Call My Bluff
18 January, 2010: Paul Smith(DPMMS)How to cheat at infinite coin tossing
1 February, 2010: Dr Jacob Rasmussen(DPMMS)Vectors and spheres
15 February, 2010: Prof David Spiegelhalter, FRS(Statslab)Quantifying epistemic uncertainty: How ignorant are you?
1 March, 2010: Dr Jeremy Butterfield (Faculty of Philosophy) [Talk notes]The uses of infinity: Emergent phenomena in physics

2008-09

13 October, 2008: Dr Ivan Smith(DPMMS)Billiards and Beyond
27 October, 2008: Prof Raymond Lickorish(DPMMS)Knots and Links
10 November, 2008: Imran Coomaraswamy, Vicky Neale, Sean Lip(DAMTP, DPMMS, DAMTP)Short Talks by Graduate Students
24 November, 2008: Prof John Barrow(DAMTP)On Pictures in Mathematics
1 December, 2008: Mathematical Call My Bluff
19 January, 2009: Prof. Sir Peter Swinnerton-Dyer(DPMMS)Rational points on cubic curves, or how to be famous without proving anything
2 February, 2009: Dr. Peter Friz(Statslab)From Lie groups to option pricing
19 February, 2009: Prof. Mike Proctor(DAMTP)Instability and pattern formation
2 March, 2009: Dr. Jeremy Butterfield(Faculty of Philosophy)Mixing physics and logic: is a quantum system an object?

2007-08

15 October, 2007: Prof. Béla Bollobás(DPMMS)Set Sums and Projections of Bodies
22 October, 2007: Prof. Neil Turok(DAMTP)What Banged?
5 November, 2007: Dr Thomas Forster(DPMMS)Avoiding the Paradoxes by Typing
19 November, 2007: Dr Maciej Dunajski (DAMTP) [Talk notes]Twistor Transform
26 November, 2007: Mathematical Call My Bluff
21 January, 2008: Prof. Ben Green(DPMMS)Ramanujan and some of his mathematics
4 February, 2008: Prof. Gary Gibbons (DAMTP) [Talk notes]The angular sum of a triangle
18 February, 2008: Dr Tom Fisher(DPMMS)Local-to-global principles in number theory
3 March, 2008: Dr Robert Gramacy (Stats Lab) [Talk notes]Designing Supercomputer Experiments

2006-07

9 October, 2006: Prof. Tim Gowers, FRS (DPMMS) [Talk notes]Finding large primes and factorizing large numbers: is there any alternative to a brute-force search?
23 October, 2006: Prof. Andrew Thomason(DPMMS)Colours, Cycles and the odd Lollipop
6 November, 2006: Dr Emily Shuckburgh (DAMTP) [Talk notes]The mathematics of weather and climate
20 November, 2006: Prof. Michael Proctor, FRS(DAMTP)Convective and absolute instabilities in large domains
27 November, 2006: Mathematical Call My Bluff
22 January, 2007: Prof. Imre Leader (DPMMS) [Talk notes]Vector space marriages
5 February, 2007: Dan Jane(DPMMS)The Ricci Flow and other maths that look good in pictures
19 February, 2007: Dr David Tong (DAMTP) [Talk notes]Quantum Geometry: What the String Saw
5 March, 2007: Prof. Jan Saxl(DPMMS)Some classical group therapy

2005-06

10 October, 2005: Prof. Imre Leader (DPMMS) [Talk notes]Clueless voting
24 October, 2005: Prof. John Hinch, FRS(DAMTP)The flow and non-flow of sand grains
7 November, 2005: Dr Arthur Norman(Computing Laboratory)Computers, calculus and confusion
21 November, 2005: Dr Peter Smith (Faculty of Philosophy) [Talk notes]Does Gödel’s Theorem matter to mathematicians?
28 November, 2005: Mathematical Call My Bluff
23 January, 2006: Prof. Béla Bollobás(DPMMS / Memphis)Thieves, hobbies and maps
6 February, 2006: Dominic Vella(DAMTP)Life at interfaces
20 February, 2006: James Cranch(Sheffield)Spaces for the stable minded
6 March, 2006: Prof. Geoffrey Grimmett(Stats Lab)Random triangles

Older talks (pre 2005-06):

2004-05

11 October: Prof. Tim Gowers, ‘How to think of complicated proofs of simple theorems’
25 October: Prof. Hugh Osborn, ‘Anti-commuting Numbers’
8 November: Prof. Martin Hyland, ‘The Cayley Numbers’
22 November: Dr Ben Green, ‘The mathematics of G.H. Hardy and J.E. Littlewood’
29 November: Mathematical Call My Bluff
24 January: Mr Sam Webster, ‘Unanswered Questions in Cosmology’
7 February: Dr Malcolm Perry, ‘M Theory’
21 February: Dr Tom Fisher, ‘The Geometry of Numbers’
7 March: Prof. Anne Davis, ‘Exploring Extra Dimensions through Cosmology’

2003-04

13 October: Prof. Tom Körner, ‘Sorting Things Out’.
27 October: Dr Piers Bursill-Hall, ‘More Sex and Virgin Mathmos’.
10 November: Prof. David Fremlin, ‘Rental Harmony’.
24 November: Dr Robert Hunt, ‘What is Maths Useful For?’
1 December: Mathematical Call My Bluff.
19 January: Prof. John Coates, ‘The oldest problem’.
26 January: Dr Gabriel Paternain, ‘The Poincaré Conjecture’.
16 February: Mr Thomas Barnet-Lamb, ‘Homage to Hofstadter, or thereabouts…’.
1 March: Dr Eugenia Cheng, ‘Logic vs illogic: why mathematics is easy and life is hard’.

2002-03

14 October: Prof. Tim Gowers, ‘A handful of unsolved problems’
28 October: Dr Piers Bursill-Hall, ‘Which came first: God or maths?’
11 November: Prof. John Hinch, ‘Explaining the Flow of Elastic Liquids’
25 November: Mr Edward Crane, ‘Complex dynamics: Julia and the rabbit’
2 December: Mathematical Call my Bluff
20 January: Dr Imre Leader, ‘Van der Waerden’s theorem’
3 February: Prof. Neil Turok, ‘Can We Understand the Universe?’
17 February: Dr Oliver Riordan, ‘The Eternity Puzzle’
4 March: Prof. Geoffrey Grimmett, ‘Random Mirrors’

2001-02

15 October: Dr Piers Bursill-Hall, ‘And now for something completely different—when engineers did maths and mathematicians talked to God’
29 October: Dr Tom Körner, ‘From waves to wavelets: 2000 years in under an hour’
12 November: Ms Julia Gog, ‘How to model your favourite disease’
26 November: Mathematical Call my Bluff
28 January: Dr Hugh Osborne, ‘Conformal symmetry’
11 February: Dr Alan Stacey, ‘Why greedy isn’t best’
25 February: Dr Keith Carne, ‘Geometry for the simple-minded’
4 March: Dr John Lister, ‘Dykes’

2000-01

16 October: Dr Piers Bursill-Hall, ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Downright Stupid: Why you don’t believe Copernicus’
23 October: Dr Martin Hyland, ‘What is the Eckmann Hilton Argument?’
7 November: Dr Damon Wischik, ‘How (not) to crash the internet’
22 January: Mr Ben Green, ‘Hardy and Littlewood’
5 February: Prof. Michael Proctor, ‘Patterns and Patches’
19 February: Dr Imre Leader, ‘The Axiom of Choice’

1999-2000

11 October: Dr James Norris, ‘When does coagulation lead to gelation?’
25 October: Dr A. D. Burbanks, ‘Godel, Goodstein, and the Edge of Provability’
8 November: Dr Stephen Siklos, ‘Singularities and the Big Bang’
22 November: Dr D. J. Mackay, ‘How to Swing’
24 January: Dr A. Iserles, ‘Computation in Lie Groups’
7 February: Dr Peter Johnstone, ‘De Morgan’s Law and the axiom of Part 1A’
21 February: Dr Ruth Williams, ‘Which twin is older?’
6 March: Dr Paul Shellard, ‘Cosmology, methods and madness’

1998-99

12 October: Dr Piers Bursill-Hall, ‘The Trinity Hangman: Local Boy Makes Good’
26 October: Prof. Tim Gowers, ‘Is there more to fractal geometry than a few pretty pictures?’
9 November: Dr Hugh Osborn, ‘Can relativity be extended to acceleration?’
23 November: Prof. H. E. Huppert, ‘How fluid is the Earth—did it move for you?
18 January: Ms Emily Shuckburgh, ‘A stirring tale of mixing: Chaotic advection, transport barriers and ozone depletion’
1 February: Prof. Julian Hunt, ‘Why does chaos theory lead to overestimate in weather/climatology?’
15 February: Dr Jan Nekovar, ‘Symplectic Geometry: from optics to Number Theory’
1 March: Prof. Tim Pedley, ‘Bioconvection: Pattern forming in swimming microorganisms’

Earlier talks

An almost complete list of TMS meetings has been compiled by Dr Paul Taylor and more recently maintained by Dr Joseph Myers. Some notes accompany the list.