The Trinity Mathematical Society is off to a cracking start to the year with near-record attendance numbers at last Monday’s talk from Prof. Leader; I counted about 270 people in the theatre and two used crates of port! The TMS will be rolling along with our second talk of the year, which will be given by Dr. Jonathan Luk (DPMMS) at 8:30PM Monday 19 October at the Winstanley Lecture Theatre, Trinity College. It will be on the subject of the “Stability of Minkowski spacetime” and promises to an exhilarating foray into the world of mathematical physics and, in particular, general relativity. Dr. Luk is one of the newest members in the Cambridge maths faculty and will hope to impart his vibrant enthusiasm to the TMS audience.

As always, there will be complimentary port and juice served prior to the talk. The talk is for members only, but you will have a chance to become a life member by paying 2 pounds fifty or 250p at the door (probably one of the cheapest society fees in Cambridge). I should also note that, if you are a member and you haven’t joined the TMS Facebook group, then please do so https://www.facebook.com/groups/674599352609435/?fref=ts

Speaker: Dr. Jonathan Luk (DPMMS)
Title: Stability of Minkowski spacetime
Abstract: General relativity is a theory of gravity described by the celebrated Einstein equations, which relate the geometry and matter content of spacetime. The Minkowski spacetime, the spacetime of special relativity, is a special solution to these equations. It depicts a vacuum spacetime with no curvature. A monumental result in mathematical physics, discovered in 1993, is the proof that Minkowski spacetime is dynamically stable in the framework of the evolution problem in general relativity. I will describe the theorem and some of the fascinating ideas behind it.

We hope to see everyone there!

Date and Time: Monday 12 October 2015, 8:30PM – 9:30PM

Place: Winstanley Lecture Theatre

Throughout Cambridge, you will struggle to find a stronger believer in the beauty of pure mathematics than Imre Leader. During this talk on tournaments, he will illustrate just how combinatorics is more than simply a bag of clever tricks, but instead a wonderfully elegant and interconnected branch of mathematics.

Hi everyone!

The Trinity Mathematical Society would like to invite you to attend the 2015 TMS Fresher’s Squash which goes from 7:30PM – 9:30PM on Wednesday 7 October in the Blue Boar Common Room at Trinity College. Like most fresher events, there will be plenty of free food and drinks as a warm introduction into our 800-member strong society. In particular, there will be some lovely French bread and cheeses as a precursor to our weekly speaker events on Mondays (with complimentary port!). Our first talk will be from Cambridge Professor of Pure Mathematics, Imre Leader, on Monday 12 October at 8:30PM at the Winstanley Lecture Theatre, who will attempt to explain the mathematics of “tournaments” in an engaging and non-technical way. (I should note that although all our talks are usually on Mondays 8:30PM at the Winstanley, this is the one talk that might be moved a bit earlier so keep your ears close to the ground.)

This is a fantastic chance for freshers to meet other freshers who also share a common interest in mathematics.  Moreover, it is an opportunity to meet the older members of the TMS who can tell you about how great life has been at Cambridge so far and especially about how great the TMS has been.

While you’re there, you can pick up a termcard of all our events and join up to our wonderful society. Life membership is very cheap – probably one of the cheapest in the university – with the cost being only £2.50. You can just make your quick cash transaction there and you will have life membership to the oldest surviving subject society at any university in the country.

[Directions: Blue Boar Common Room is on the side of Trinity Street opposite the Great Gate. More specifically, it is by the Wolfson building. If you can’t find it, please just ask the porters nicely and they will point it out.]

We hope to see you there!

The Trinity Maths Society AGM will be taking place on Wednesday 11th March, at 7:30pm, in the Blue Boar Common Room (Trinity College). Mary Fortune will be acting as returning officer. Please come along and vote!

The list of people running for positions on the Trinity Maths Society committee 2015-2016 is:

President:

Oliver Feng
Josh Lam

Vice President:

Nancy Fu
Matei Mandache

Junior Treasurer:

George Fortune

Secretary:

Jason Kwong

Membership Secretary:

Andrew Carlotti
Antony Fung

Constable:

Sam Tickle

Speaker: Dr. Eric Lauga (DAMTP)
Venue: Winstanley Lecture Theatre
Time: 09/03/2015 20:30, drinks from 20:15

While we all know that fluid dynamics allows planes to fly and boats to sail, it is less known that it also plays a crucial role in many biological processes. Here we will illustrate a particular biological phenomenon which actively uses the presence of a flowing liquid, namely how small organisms such as bacteria and algae use hydrodynamic forces to self-propel.

Speaker: Prof. Imre Leader/Dr Thomas Forster (DPMMS)
Venue: Winstanley Lecture Theatre
Time: 02/03/2015 20:30, drinks from 20:15

This year’s Trinity Mathematical Society Symposium is running from 10:00 to 17:45 on Sunday 22nd February in the Winstanley Lecture Theatre in Trinity College. We have talks by fellows and PhD students, ranging across all areas of mathematical research. The event is free and open to all; no particular specialist knowledge is assumed. There is no need to stay for the whole day – just drop in on talks you find interesting.

The program is:

10:00 – 10:45    Dr. Nathalie Vriend: Using mathematics in my journey to deserts and mountains
10:45 – 11:15     Mary Fortune: All About That Bayes: Making Inference from Data
11:15 – 11:45     Alexey Morgunov: The theory behind co-evolution based methods for protein structure analysis
11:45 – 12:15     Charlotte Kirchhoff-Lukat: Generalised Geometry: Double the Fun

12:15 – 13:15      -LUNCH-
13:15 – 14:00     Dr. Jonathan Nelson : Statistical modelling in tennis: a case study using world rankings
14:00 – 14:30     Anna Lappala: Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Polymers and Polymer Brushes
14:30 – 15:00     Boris Fackovec: Chemical dynamics and rare events in soft matter physics
15:00 – 15:30     David Vasak: Local to global principles: the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture explained

15:30 – 16:00     -BREAK-
16:00 – 16:30     Yarin Gal: Representations of Meaning
16:30 – 17:00     Zhen Lin Low: The method of universal instances
17:00 – 17:45     Prof. Ross Anderson/Dr. Robert Brady: Can mathematics be heretical?

20:00 –                Annual Dinner

(Made possible by the kind support of the Heilbronn Fund)

Speaker: Dr. Henry Wilton (DPMMS)
Venue: Winstanley Lecture Theatre
Time: 16/02/2015 20:30, drinks from 20:15

The Banach-Tarski Paradox is the counter-intuitive fact that a sphere can be cut into finitely many pieces and reassembled into two copies of itself. Of course, you can’t do this in real life, but it’s more than just a curiosity. In fact, it’s the start of a beautiful mathematical story at the heart of modern group theory, geometry, logic and analysis. I’ll try to tell some of that story.

Speaker: Dr. Paul Birrell (MRC Biostatistics Unit)
Venue: Winstanley Lecture Theatre
Time: 09/02/2015 20:30, drinks from 20:15