Imagine if your doctor had a digital model of your heart, personalised to you and updated with your latest medical information. This isn't science fiction – this revolutionary healthcare is being tested now. In this podcast we speak to Steven Niederer , who leads the CVDNet project developing and testing these ideas, and his colleague Richard Wilkinson , from the University of Nottingham. Richard is one of the organisers of the long research programme, Representing, calibrating & leveraging ...
Nov 20, 2025•29 min•Ep. 116
"I have learnt that even if you are not a master in mathematics and science you are still able to grasp the essence." This is Céline Broeckaert talking, believe it or not, about the famously difficult theory of quantum mechanics. Céline knows what she's talking about. She's not a physicist, in fact she's a Romance languages scholar, author and playwright. Yet she's written a book about quantum mechanics together with her physicist husband Frank Verstraete, Leigh Trapnell Professor of Quantum Phy...
Nov 12, 2025•27 min•Ep. 115
You are blue, and are surrounded by other blue people: swirling together in a dot, identical and indistinguishable. From somewhere above you hear the ticking of a clock, and suddenly find yourself and some of your fellows pulled upwards, sucked through a tube arcing high above... Intrigued? That is a description of one of Jess Enright's adventures in her mathematical models. This is an exciting new approach that researchers are using to invite people into the worlds of their models, both to comm...
Nov 05, 2025•29 min•Ep. 114
There's been a lot of talk recently about whether artificial intelligence is becoming just as good as maths as humans are. But quietly in the background there's been another development regarding the use of computers in maths. It involves proof assistants : computer programmes that can check whether a mathematical proof is correct; whether it can be derived from a set of basic axioms of mathematics using only the rules of logic. In this episode of Living proof we meet Kevin Buzzard , an expert o...
Oct 29, 2025•37 min•Ep. 113
In this episode of the Living Proof podcast we're delighted to meet Moustapha Fall . Moustapha is the Center President of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Senegal and winner of a prestigious Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians from Developing Countries . He also plays an important role on the international stage as Member-at-Large of the Executive Committee of the International Mathematical Union . Moustapha talks to us about about the amazing institution that is AI...
Oct 22, 2025•25 min•Ep. 112
Earlier this year the the anomalous mathematical patterns sci-art competition attracted some jaw-dropping entries . The competition was held in connection to the Stochastic systems for anomalous diffusion research programme which took place at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI) in Cambridge last year. In this episode of Maths on the Move we talk to Codina Cotar , who co-organised the INI programme and helped put on the competition. Codina explains the maths which served a...
Oct 15, 2025•23 min•Ep. 111
The mathematical area of topology is all about figuring out what truly defines a shape. Famously, topologists consider a coffee cup to be the same as a doughnut because one can be turned into the other without cutting or gluing — what defines and relates these two shapes for a topologist is that they have a single hole. As you might imagine, if you have ever tried to drink coffee out of a doughnut, topology has traditionally been part of pure mathematics. Topological data analysis (TDA), however...
Oct 08, 2025•23 min•Ep. 110
Welcome to the new season of the Maths on the Move podcast! We start the season with theoretical physicist David Tong of the University of Cambridge looking at an important milestone in the history of physics: the 100th birthday of quantum mechanics which we celebrate this year. David tells us why a new theory was needed, which of the many strange aspects of quantum mechanics is, in his opinion, the most significant, and that Erwin Schrödinger had a tendency to be grumpy. David also tells us how...
Oct 01, 2025•32 min•Ep. 109
We may not notice it, but mathematics impacts our lives on a daily basis. Mathematical models inform policy decisions around the economy and public health . They are used to understand climate change and how to respond to it. They are vital in the design of public buildings and spaces. They are even used to try and prevent crime . It seems reasonable, then, that the mathematical models should reflect people's interaction with each other and their environment, and that they should take account of...
Jul 09, 2025•28 min•Ep. 108
On May 30th 2024 seminar goers at Princeton University witnessed a thrilling moment. The mathematician Zhouli Xu of the University of California, LA, announced that, together with colleagues he had sorted out the 126th dimension. Not in general, but in regards to a problem that has taunted mathematicians since the 1960s. The problem involves strange shapes and is called the Kervaire invariant problem , after the mathematician Michel Kervaire. In this episode of Maths on the Move Zhouli takes us ...
Jul 01, 2025•34 min•Ep. 107
The capabilities of artificial intelligence may appear to be galloping ahead, but there are still many challenges that need to be solved. Last month we joined members of the Maths4DL research project for a hackathon — an intensive two-day brainstorming session designed to figure out how one might teach machine learning techniques for solving differential equations and how best to test those techniques. In this episode of Maths on the Move, Maths4DL members Yolanne Lee from University College Lon...
Jun 25, 2025•24 min•Ep. 106
Imagine we could have a digital version of our entire body which could help us, and our doctors, decide what life style is good for us, predict which diseases we might get, and how to best treat them? In short, what if we could all have our very own digital twin? The idea isn't quite as sci-fi as it sounds. A gigantic scientific effort called the Physiome Project is about piecing together a mathematical description of the entire physiology of the human body. Once this has been achieved to a suff...
Jun 18, 2025•22 min•Ep. 105
In this podcast we hope to give you some interesting information. This information is encoded in terms of 0s and 1s – the classical bits in your computer or phone. But what if instead we were using a quantum computer? Then we'd be dealing with quantum bits, or qubits , opening up exciting new possibilities. And quantum information theory is the area of mathematics that explores how we can do that. Adina Goldberg was one of the participants at a recent research programme in this area at the Isaac...
Jun 11, 2025•22 min•Ep. 103
From sunny parks to banquets in castles – come with us on an exciting adventure in Oslo as we join the celebrations for the 2025 Abel Prize ! We meet Masaki Kashiwara , winner of this year's prize, who tells us about the importance of collaborations and creating new things. Ragni Piene , previous chair of the Abel Prize Committee, gives us a look behind the scenes. And Andrea D'Agnolo , one of Masaki Kashiwara's most recent collaborators, celebrates his friend and fellow bridge-builder between m...
Jun 04, 2025•22 min•Ep. 102
Sarah Hart is a mathematician who is interested, not just in the maths itself, but also its connections to other areas of culture and art. She's done an amazing number of things throughout her career — from research in pure mathematics and heading up a maths department, to being the first woman Gresham Professor of Geometry and President of the British Society for the History of Mathematics . Sarah has also written a fascinating book, called Once upon a time: The wondrous connections between mat...
Apr 22, 2025•25 min•Ep. 101
One thing we all have in common is that we did maths at school. Those of us from the English speaking world most likely also did Shakespeare at school. Do these two things have anything in common? It turns out that they do! Our friend Rob Eastaway , author and Director of the amazing Maths Inspiration project, has written a book called Much Ado About Numbers: Shakespeare's mathematical life and times . In this episode of Maths on the Move , Rob tells us about some of the many instances of maths ...
Apr 15, 2025•24 min•Ep. 100
Every now and again, and more often than you'd think, the work of mathematics overlaps with the world of theatre and film. This happened again recently when the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI) organised a staging of the play Diving into math with Emmy Noether. Noether was a pure mathematician whose results made waves far beyond her field. Albert Einstein called her a "creative mathematical genius". The play is produced by Portrait Theater Vienna in co-operation with Freie ...
Apr 07, 2025•29 min•Ep. 99
Last Wednesday, March 26, 2025, this year's Abel Prize was awarded to the Japanese mathematician Masaki Kashiwara. The Abel Prize is one of the most prestigious honours in mathematics. It is awarded every year by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and comes with a prize money of over £550,000. In this episode of Maths on the Move we talk to Helge Holden , Chair of the Abel Prize Committee. Helge tells us about this year's winner, the history and purpose of the Prize, and how the winner...
Mar 31, 2025•30 min•Ep. 98
The UK government has recently pledged to put around £14 billion into supporting the development of artificial intelligence over the next few years. But because AI comes with perils as well as promises, careful policy decision are going to be crucial. In order to make such decision in an informed way, politicians need to interact with the mathematicians and scientist who develop AI. In this episode of Maths on the Move we talk to mathematician Chris Budd who recently went to Parliament for somet...
Mar 25, 2025•25 min•Ep. 97
We kick off our latest series of podcasts with an episode of Living proof , produced jointly with the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI). This episode is all about the communication of mathematics to the wider world, which is becoming ever more recognised as a priority within the maths community. We talk to Sara Khan, Communications Manager at the INI, about how this renowned research institute supports mathematics communication. And we revisit our interview with Hannah Fry w...
Mar 18, 2025•29 min•Ep. 96
Last summer we were lucky enough to attend the European Congress of Mathematics (ECM) in Seville, Spain. The Congress sees the award of several prestigious prizes , including the Otto Neugebauer Prize for the History of Mathematics. In this episode of Maths on the Move we talk to this year's winner of the Otto Neugebauer Prize, Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze , who has worked on and written about mathematicians who fled Nazi Germany. Reinhard tells us about the motivation for his work, how the Nazi r...
Dec 24, 2024•16 min•Ep. 95
What is as hypnotising as a beautiful goldfish circling its bowl, but can help you understand the way a virus can spread? The answer is one of the beautiful interactive simulations produced by VisualPDE ! In this podcast we talk to Benjamin Walker from University College London, and to Adam Townsend and Andrew Krause from Durham University, who together created this online solver of partial differential equations . Such equations describe how quantities change over space and time and therefore u...
Dec 17, 2024•30 min•Ep. 94
Are you thinking of doing a Masters or PhD in maths or another STEM subject but are worried about funding? Then the Martingale Foundation might be for you. The Foundation's mission is "to enable and nurture talented individuals from low-socioeconomic backgrounds to thrive within world-leading postgraduate study and become STEM leaders" by providing full scholarships as well as a development programme. In this episode of Maths on the Move we talk to two current Martingale scholars, Alexandra Sori...
Dec 10, 2024•26 min•Ep. 93
As a PhD student working with the Maths4DL research project, Yolanne Lee works on the mathematics that powers artificial intelligence. In this podcast she tells us about what she thinks AI will be able to do in the near future, what it has to do with cats and dogs, and how music provided her first experience of science. We also get to hear her play the piano! To find out more about the topics discussed in this podcast see Artificial intelligence and deep learning: Your questions answered . This ...
Dec 03, 2024•24 min•Ep. 92
We're very excited that Hannah Fry is coming to join us in Cambridge in January 2025. Fry is a brilliant mathematician, best-selling author, award winning science presenter and host of popular podcasts and television shows. She'll be Cambridge's first Professor for the Public Understanding of Mathematics. In this episode of Maths on the Move Hannah explains how her interest in public engagement grew directly out of her work as a mathematician, talks about how she got into maths in the first plac...
Nov 26, 2024•26 min•Ep. 91
We all know what data is: bits of information of which in this age of Big Data we have lots of. You might also know what topology is: the study of shapes that considers two shapes to be the same if you can deform one into the other without tearing them or gluing things together. But what is topological data analysis ? And how might it help to understand proteins or diseases such as cancer? We find out with Heather Harrington a mathematician we met at the European Congress of Mathematics (ECM) th...
Nov 19, 2024•28 min•Ep. 90
We love a game of billiards — or at least the mathematical version of it. It's a dynamical system that's just about basic enough to study but still poses lots of open questions. In this episode of Maths on the Move we talk to Giovanni Forni about chaos, periodicity and the many things we still hope to learn about billiards. We met Giovanni at the European Congress of Mathematics (ECM) in summer this year, which we attended with kind support of the London Mathematical Society . See here for more ...
Nov 12, 2024•26 min•Ep. 89
As the days in the UK get shorter and darker we continue remembering the brilliant time we had in Seville last summer at the European Congress of Mathematics (ECM). In this episode of Maths on the move we talk to one of the mathematicians we met at the ECM, Jessica Fintzen , who won a prestigious EMS Prize at the Congress. Jessica tells us how to capture infinitely many snowflakes at the same time, the maths of symmetry and her work on representation theory, and why she likes doing handstands. T...
Nov 05, 2024•14 min•Ep. 88
The world is full of networks. We're part of them, our infrastructure is full of them, and there are even networks within our bodies (e.g. made from neurons). This summer the mathematician Richard Montgomery won a prestigious EMS Prize at the European Congress of Mathematics (ECM) for his work on the pure maths of networks, also known as graph theory . In this episode of Maths on the move Richard tells us about an amazing result he helped to prove to great acclaim, known as Ringel's conjecture ,...
Oct 29, 2024•17 min•Ep. 87
David Spiegelhalter, one of our favourite statisticians in the whole world, has a new book out. It's called The art of uncertainty: How to navigate chance, ignorance, risk and luck and published by Pelican Books. In this episode of Maths on the Move we talk to David about the book, touching on a huge range of topics — from double yolked eggs and the bay of pigs, to why it's useful to disagree and why uncertainty is personal. Enjoy! To find out more about some of the topics mentioned in this epis...
Oct 22, 2024•24 min•Ep. 86
