Speaker:Film Night (800th Meeting)
Venue: Winstanley Lecture Theatre, Trinity College
Time: 09/11/2009 20:30, drinks from 20:15

To mark the occassion of our 800th meeting* falling in the 800th anniversary year of the University of Cambridge, we are proud to host a special film night with George Paul Csicsery’s 1993 documentary on one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th Century. There will be a brief talk on the history of the Society beforehand and a celebratory party is planned afterwards. (*depending on your counting system)

Speaker:Dr Colm-cille Caulfield (DAMTP)
Venue: Winstanley Lecture Theatre, Trinity College
Time: 26/10/2009 20:30, drinks from 20:15

Mathematics is the language that describes the natural world, but it is sometimes a bit hard to read the handwriting. In this talk, I will introduce the concept of ‘dimensional analysis’ as a very powerful tool for understanding the key quantities of interest in a range of physical situations. A particularly famous and appropriate example is the accurate estimation of the (classified) yield of the Trinity nuclear test by the Trinity mathematician G. I. Taylor using (declassified) photographs. I will also discuss some closely related techniques for the identification of ‘similarity solutions’ which often manage to capture the important features of a physical system with surprisingly little mathematical heavy lifting.

Speaker:Dr Mike Tehranchi (Stats Lab)
Venue: Winstanley Lecture Theatre, Trinity College
Time: 12/10/2009 20:30, drinks from 20:15

The talk is available.

Probabilistic modelling plays a crucial role in natural sciences, engineering, and economics. One of the most basic building blocks of these models is the stochastic process called Brownian motion. I will discusss ways in which this fundamental process arises in several diverse contexts in applied and pure mathematics.

Speaker:Dr. Jeremy Butterfield (Faculty of Philosophy)
Venue: Old Combination Room, Trinity College
Time: 02/03/2009 20:30, drinks from 20:15

The founding fathers of quantum theory debated whether the peculiar behaviour of quantum systems, such as their non-classical statistics, meant that they were not objects. In current philosophy of physics, the debate continues, using the tools of modern logic and metaphysics. This talk will review the state of play.

Speaker:Prof. Mike Proctor (DAMTP)
Venue: Old Combination Room, Trinity College
Time: 19/02/2009 20:30, drinks from 20:15

When physical systems with many symmetries become unstable, the result is a pattern with fewer symmetries. But typically there are an infinite number of such patterns, and the selection between them is due to nonlinear effects. Many cases can be understood by means of ‘equivariant bifurcation theory’. I will give a brief discussion of this with some common examples of patterns that can be predicted on symmetry grounds.

Speaker:Dr. Peter Friz (Statslab)
Venue: Winstanley Lecture Theatre, Trinity College
Please note change of venue
Time: 02/02/2009 20:30, drinks from 20:15

Modern financial theory tells us that prices of options are given by expectations of the payoffs with respect to some pricing measure, typically written as infinite dimensional integrals of some functional against Wiener measure. The fast and accurate numerical evaluation of such integrals is an ongoing challenge. I will explain some recent ideas based on the Lie group structure of iterated integrals. The resulting “cubature” formulae can be traced back to no one less than Sir Isaac Newton.

Speaker:Prof. Sir Peter Swinnerton-Dyer (DPMMS)
Venue: Old Combination Room, Trinity College
Time: 19/01/2009 20:30, drinks from 20:15

This talk explains how the notorious Birch

Speaker:Prof John Barrow (DAMTP)
Venue: Old Combination Room, Trinity College
Time: 24/11/2008 20:30, drinks from 20:15

A look at the role of pictures and images in mathematics, from the first hand-illustrated manuscripts, graphs, and diagrams to the iconic modern images of the atomic bomb, the London Underground map, impossible figures, and the Mandelbrot set.

Speaker:Imran Coomaraswamy, Vicky Neale, Sean Lip (DAMTP, DPMMS, DAMTP)
Venue: Old Combination Room, Trinity College
Time: 10/11/2008 20:30, drinks from 20:15

Three short talks by graduate students on their research.

Imran Coomaraswamy (DAMTP): Fluid Dynamics

Vicky Neale (DPMMS): Additive Combinatorics

Sean Lip (DAMTP): Cosmology