Plus.maths.org Podcasts

To help mitigate climate change the UK government has pledged to decarbonised UK electricity supply by 2035. That's a huge science and engineering challenge on a very tight deadline. In this episode we talk to two people who know all about the challenges involved: Chris Dent, Professor of Industrial Mathematics, and Lars Schewe, Reader in Operation…

We continue our series about bringing maths to the stage and screen by going back to 2012 when we were lucky enough to host the UK premiere of the Travelling Salesman, here at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences, our home. It is an unusual movie: despite almost every character being a mathematician there's not a mad person in sight. Moreover, the …

When you think of Alan Turing you might think of his work breaking the Enigma code in World War II. Or you might think of his work that helped build the foundations of computer science and mathematical logic. Or you might even think of his groundbreaking work in mathematical biology on morphogensis which helps explain animal patterns. One thing we …

This is the second part of our mini series focussing on mathematics coming to life on stage and in film. We revisit our 2008 interview with mathematician and actor Victoria Gould and mathematician Marcus DuSautoy, who were both involved in the development of the play A disappearing number produced by Complicité. The play explores the fascinating co…

In the summer we came across news coverage claiming that scientist were on the verge of discovering a fundamental force of nature they hadn't previously known about. This would be a fifth force, in addition to gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. Such a discovery would be quite a revolution, so we went to talk to our f…

Victoria Gould has always known she would be an actor, and went straight from studying arts at school to running her own theatre company. But she eventually had to come clean about her guilty secret - she loves maths - and has since managed to combine a career as a research mathematician and teacher with a successful acting career on television and…

How many dimensions are there? We might not be aware, but we are actually used to living in a curved, multidimensional Universe. In this episode theoretical physicist David Berman explains how, and he also dives into the world of string theory which predicts that the Universe has ten dimensions, some of which are hidden from our view. We first publ…

n this podcast we bring you breaking news from the world of topology! Four mathematicians, all in earlier stages of their career, have resolved the long-standing telescope conjecture which explores holes in spheres – of any dimension! The result was announced this summer at a conference organised by Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences …

How is mathematics related to frequency related to pitch? We found out from our favourite music correspondent, Oli Freke! In this podcast you can hear how the music we love emerges from pure mathematical beats. This podcast was originally released earlier this year when musician Ed Sheeran was in the news as he was being sued for similarities betwe…

We humans have many rules and regulations surrounding noise — because we recognise that noise disruption is annoying, stressful, and ultimately robs us of our health. Spare a thought for whales then, who have to put up with the constant noise caused by shipping and the construction of oil rigs and wind farms in the oceans. There are concerns that t…

This week we co-host a fascinating episode of the Isaac Newton Institute's Living Proof podcast. In the episode Dan Aspel speaks to Coralie Colmez, author of the young adult novel The irrational diary of Clara Valentine, recently chosen as one of Chalkdust magazine's books of the year. Coralie’s ambition was to write a story rich in both mathematic…

Did you do anything fun on your summer holidays? The mathematicians in this podcast spent some of their summer helping to create the perfect smoothie, getting the most sugar out of sugar cane, and attacking other important real-world problems. They did all this attending the Graduate Modelling Camp, which is organised every year by the Newton Gatew…

There's been some huge news in the world of cosmology: for the first time scientists have detected a low frequency hum of gravitational waves. The new results were published by the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves, NANOGrav for short. The NANOGrav team were not alone — they coordinated with collaborations in Europe, Indi…

People don't usually think about maths and literature as related subjects, but it turns out that there are plenty of connections between the two. In this podcast we talk to mathematician Sarah Hart about her brilliant book Once upon a time: The wondrous connections between mathematics and literature. Sarah tells us about the links between poetry an…

"I think I'll stop here." This is how, on 23rd June 1993, Andrew Wiles ended his series of lectures at the Isaac Newton Institute (INI), our neighbour here at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences. The applause, so witnesses report, was thunderous. Wiles had just announced a proof that had eluded mathematicians for over 350 years: the proof of Ferma…

Chocolate and mayonnaise are two of our all time favourite foods, so we were very happy to get the chance to talk to Valerie Pinfield, Professor of Engineering at Loughborough University, who has used maths to work on both chocolate and mayonnaise. We talked to Valerie at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge where Valer…

Did you know that we don't know what 85% of the stuff in our Universe is made of? This mysterious 85% is known as dark matter. We can't see it because it doesn't emit or reflect light, but we know it's there because it exerts a gravitational pull on stars and galaxies, and also bends the path of light. In this podcast we talk to Blake Sherwin about…

Was the mathematical modelling projecting the course of the pandemic too pessimistic, or were the projections justified? Matt Keeling tells our colleagues Ed Hill and Laura Guzmán-Rincón from SBIDER about some of the COVID models that fed into public policy.----more---- Matt Keeling ----more----We're very pleased to host this episode of SBIDER Pres…

In a tank in an underground laboratory in Cambridge a little green alga is executing a powerful breaststroke. It belongs to a group of algae called volvocales and it doesn't have a brain. So how can it coordinate its tiny little "arms" to perform motions worthy of an Olympic swimmer? Algae going through their paces. (Movies: Kirsty Wan and Raymond …

What is infinity? What is infinity plus 100? What is infinity plus infinity? Today's podcast was inspired by questions sent in by our friend Ash. To answer Ash's questions we take a trip to our favourite hotel, and we revisit our 2012 interview with our late boss, John D. Barrow, when we asked him – does infinity exist? Listen to the podcast to fin…

During the pandemic we all learnt to value the work of epidemiologists, whose mathematical models are essential in giving us an idea of where an epidemic might be heading. But just as there's a wide range of infectious diseases apart from COVID, so there's also a wide range of research questions epidemiologists ask. In this podcast we talk to resea…

"What's a statistician's favourite sandwich filling?..." Timandra Harkness – presenter, writer, comedian and Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society – told our friends Dan Aspel and Maha Kaouri her favourite maths joke in this episode of the Living Proof podcast from the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences. Timandra Harkness Timandra b…

Having empathy with your audience – with all your audiences – is the first step for making your content accessible. Hannah Thomas of the Government Analysis Function explained this in her brilliant talk at the Communicating mathematics for the public event at the Newton Gateway to Mathematics. Hannah's talk was full of insights and practical ideas …

We are very happy to work closely with our neighbours, the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI), to help explain, celebrate and publicise the research that happens at the Institute. But what challenges does that present? And why should it happen in the first place? Following on from the Communicating mathematics for the public eve…

Here at Plus, we were very grateful for Tom Irving's work during the COVID-19 pandemic. He was the Co-Head of the secretariat of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Modelling group (otherwise known as SPI-M). One of his responsibilities was writing the consensus statements that came out of SPI-M, summarising current understanding of the mathematical …

If you've ever been lucky enough to meet David Spiegelhalter, or hear him talk in person or on TV or radio, you'll know he tells a great story. And the stories he told in his 2015 book Sex by numbers were fascinating and highly entertaining, as well giving us the tools to critically assess the statistics we read every day in the news. And sex is ba…

The world needs to move to renewable energy sources, such as solar or wind. The problem with those is that they're intermittent. That's because the Sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. What we need, then, are efficient ways of storing energy: efficient batteries. Currently lithium ion batteries are being used but there are iss…

Will climate change leave the region you live in hotter and drier, or wetter and stormier? It's a question of utmost importance in many areas of the world, yet it's one that climate scientists can't answer. This is why world-leading climate scientist Tim Palmer is calling for a high-performance supercomputing centre dedicated entirely to climate ch…

There are some numbers you can rely on. The speed of light, c, is 299,792,458 ms-1. The gravitational constant, G, is 6.674 x 10-11m3kg-1s-2. These are examples of what are often called the constants of nature – fundamental physical quantities that seem to be the same everywhere, and unchanging over time. Or are they? Today would have been our wond…

Amid much controversy, the 2022 World Cup has begun and the action has now moved onto the football pitches inside the many newly built stadiums in Qatar. But how are these stadiums turned from architectural sketches into real buildings? For this week's episode we delve back far into our archive to hear from Paul Shepherd from the University of Bath…

Yuriy Semenov was forced to leave Ukraine, and his work at the Institute of Hydromechanics at the National Academy of Sciences, due to the Russian invasion of February 2022. He found sanctuary in Britain at the University of East Anglia. In part this was thanks to the Solidarity for mathematicians programme ran by the Isaac Newton Institute for Mat…

Professor Nataliya Vaisfel'd was until recently a mathematician at Odesa I. I. Mechnykov National University. Forced to flee Ukraine after the Russian invasion of her home country in February of this year, Nataliya has since travelled across Europe with her wheelchair-bound mother and their dogs, eventually finding sanctuary in Britain. In part thi…

Over the summer we were lucky enough to meet some young female mathematicians who were just finishing up their summer research projects with the Philippa Fawcett Internship Programme and the Cambridge Mathematics Placements programme. On our way to the writing workshops we were running with these women, we walked past six inspiring portraits of fem…

In this podcast we are very happy to revisit our 2017 interview with Holly Krieger, one of the six Cambridge mathematicians whose portrait is included in the Women of Mathematics photo exhibition. Krieger works in dynamical systems theory, particularly on chaotic systems. In this interview she told us about the joys of learning and conversations wi…

In this podcast we are very happy to revist our 2017 interview with Julia Gog - Professor of Mathematical Biology and a very good friend of us here at plus.maths.org. Over the last two years we've been working closely with Gog and her colleagues at the JUNIPER modelling consortium, communicating their work on the mathematical front-line of the COVI…

In this podcast we revisit our 2017 interview with Anne-Christine Davis, Professor of Theoretical Physics. Anne was the first female professor in the Maths faculty at the University of Cambridge. In this interview, first recorded to celebrate the addition of six portraits of Cambridge mathematicians to the Women of Mathematics photo exhibition, Dav…

Last week we started a special series of podcasts revisiting the Women of Mathematics photo exhibition, which celebrates female mathematicians from institutions throughout Europe. When the University of Cambridge hosted the exhibition in 2017, we had the opportunity to interview the six Cambridge mathematicians who's portraits appear in the exhibit…

This month we had the pleasure of meeting some young female mathematicians who were just finishing up their summer research projects with the Philippa Fawcett Internship Programme and the Cambridge Mathematics Placements programme. On our way to the writing workshops we were running with these women, we walked past six inspiring portraits of female…

In this podcast, first published in August 2020, we hear from machine learning pioneer Yoshua Bengio, who believes that creating a true artificial intelligence will only be possible once machines have something that babies are born with: the ability to interact with the world, observe what happens, and adapt to the consequences of their actions. Yo…

Artificial intelligence and machines that train themselves might sound like a plot from a science fiction movie, but these things are already part of our everyday lives. How can a machine learn to distinguish a picture of a cat from a picture of a dog? At the Heidelberg Laureate Forum in 2019, Chris Budd, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Uni…

To celebrate the Commonwealth Games happening this week in the UK we are visiting one of the venues, the velodrome in the Lee Valley VeloPark in London. The velodrome, with its striking curved shape, was built for the London 2012 Olympics. In the run up to the 2012 Olympics, we talked to structural engineers Andrew Weir and Pete Winslow from Expedi…

June Huh has won one of this year's Fields Medals at the International Congress of Mathematicians. The Fields Medal is one of the most prestigious prizes in mathematics. It is awarded every four years "to recognise outstanding mathematical achievement for existing work and for the promise of future achievement". Up to four mathematicians up to the …

Hugo Duminil-Copin has won a 2022 Fields Medal for his work transforming the mathematical theory of phase transitions in statistical physics. Fields Medals count among the highest honours in mathematics and are awarded every four years at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) to researchers up to the age of 40. Hugo Duminil-Copin (Phot…

James Maynard has won a 2022 Fields Medal for "spectacular contributions to number theory". Fields Medals count among the highest honours in mathematics and are awarded every four years at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) to researchers up to the age of 40. James Maynard (Photo by Ryan Cowan, used with permission) In this podcast,…

Hello from Helsinki! We are very pleased to be bringing you coverage direct from the 2022 International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) – one of the highlights of the mathematical calendar. The ICM takes place every four years and it's usually the biggest maths conference of them all, attracting thousands of participants, and also sees the awards …

We are getting very excited - next week is the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM)- one of the highlights of the mathematical calendar! The ICM takes place every four years and it’s the biggest maths conference of them all, attracting thousands of participants, and also sees the awards of some very prestigious prizes, including the famou…

We all have our favoured methods of shuffling cards, but most of us don't think any more about it once we've started playing a game. But there's so much more to be discovered! In this podcast mathematician Cheryl Praeger and magician Will Houstoun reveal the maths and magic behind shuffling cards. And as this podcast, first published in March 2021,…

In this episode we meet the irrepressible Anita Layton. As well as leading a busy research team, Anita also spends much of her downtime fostering diversity and mentorships throughout her networks, and is professionally engaged across disciplines as distinct as applied mathematics, computer science and the medical sciences. She was also voted one of…

"We all work with exponential growth and we're really, really used to it, but we are still amazed at how fast things take off at the end." This is epidemiologist Matt Keeling talking about how a disease outbreak can still take you by surprise even if you've been working in the field for 25 years. Matt's team at the University of Warwick has been ru…