We recently found out why pieces of toast tend to land butter side down. It' because the physical factors at play, including the typical height of breakfast tables and the strength of the Earth's gravity, are just right to allow a piece of toast to perform one flip on its way to the floor: from butter side up to butter side down. The strength of the Earth's gravity is measured by the gravitational constant g , one of the constants of nature. These constants are special not just when it comes to ...
Oct 08, 2024•14 min•Ep. 85
A Gömböc is a strange thing. It looks like an egg with sharp edges, and when you put it down it starts wriggling and rolling around as if it were alive. Until not so long ago no-one knew whether Gömböcs even existed. Gabor Domokos, one of their discoverers, reckons that in some sense they barely exists at all. So what are Gömböcs and what makes them special? In this episode of Maths on the move we revisit an interview with Domokos from all the way back in 2009. We were reminded of this interview...
Oct 01, 2024•22 min•Ep. 82
Over the summer we've been incredibly lucky to have been working with Justin Chen, a maths student at the University of Cambridge who is about to start his Masters. Justin has done some great work on how to explain the concept of a mathematical group, and group theory as a whole, to non-mathematicians. In this episode of Maths on the move he tells us how groups are collection of actions, akin to walking around on a field, and why group theory is often called the study of symmetry. He also marvel...
Sep 24, 2024•25 min•Ep. 84
This summer we were very pleased to attend the European Congress of Mathematics (ECM), which took place in Seville, Spain, in July. We went to lots of fascinating talks and generally enjoyed the mathematical hustle and bustle. We also interviewed a range of interesting mathematicians about topics as diverse as mathematical billiards and topological data analysis, and we now bring you these interviews as part of our podcast. First up is the eminent Avi Wigderson, who has won many prestigious math...
Sep 17, 2024•19 min•Ep. 83
Is there life elsewhere in the Universe? And how did life emerge here on Earth? These two questions are often considered separately, but answers to one shed important light on answers to the other. In their new book Is Earth exceptional: The quest for cosmic life , renowned astrophysicist Mario Livio and Nobel laureate Jack Szostak combine both these question and find fascinating answers. In this episode of Maths on the move we talk to Livio about the new book. From creating life in the lab to s...
Sep 10, 2024•27 min•Ep. 81
We're getting excited for the summer here but before we all head off on holidays we catch up with Marianne in Spain at the European Congress of Mathematics , and Justin and Rachel in the UK having just attended some fascinating events in London and Cambridge held by the Isaac Newton Institute of Mathematical Sciences and the Newton Gateway . Marianne told us about her recent interview with Avi Widgerson – winner of the Abel Prize in 2021 and the most recent Turing Prize. Justin told us about how...
Jul 24, 2024•19 min•Ep. 80
How we behave can have far greater impacts than just on our own daily lives. For example who we interact with and whether we get vaccinated affects how diseases spread through the community. So if we are going to use maths to try to understand such a challenge facing society, we need to make sure we include human behaviour in our mathematical models. But how do you mathematically describe the messiness of human behaviour? To find out we talk to mathematicians Kirsty Bolton , Assistant Professor ...
Jul 16, 2024•24 min•Ep. 79
We're very excited to be going to this year's European Congress of Mathematics (ECM), which will take place in Seville, Spain, in July! We noticed that mathematicians who win one of the prizes awarded at the ECM by the European Mathematical Society quite often go on to win a Fields Medal , one of the highest honours in mathematics. So to celebrate the run-up to the ECM we've launched Euromaths , a miniseries of podcasts revisiting interviews with Fields Medallists who previously won an EMS prize...
Jun 26, 2024•11 min•Ep. 78
We're very excited to be going to this year's European Congress of Mathematics (ECM), which will take place in Seville, Spain, in July! We noticed that mathematicians who win one of the prizes awarded at the ECM by the European Mathematical Society quite often go on to win a Fields Medal , one of the highest honours in mathematics. So to celebrate the run-up to the ECM we've launched Euromaths , a miniseries of podcasts revisiting interviews with Fields Medallists who previously won an EMS prize...
Jun 19, 2024•12 min•Ep. 77
We're very excited to be going to this year's European Congress of Mathematics (ECM), which will take place in Seville, Spain, in July! We noticed that mathematicians who win one the prizes awarded at the ECM by the European Mathematical Society quite often go on to win a Fields Medal , one of the highest honours in mathematics. So to celebrate the run-up to the ECM we've launched Euromaths , a miniseries of podcasts revisiting interviews with Fields Medallists who previously won an EMS prize. T...
Jun 11, 2024•9 min•Ep. 76
We're very excited to be going to this year's European Congress of Mathematics (ECM), which will take place in Seville, Spain, in July! And we noticed that mathematicians who win one the prizes awarded at the ECM by the European Mathematical Society quite often go on to win a Fields Medal , one of the highest honours in mathematics. So to celebrate the run-up to the ECM we've launched Euromaths , a miniseries of podcasts revisiting interviews with Fields Medallists who previously won an EMS priz...
Jun 04, 2024•17 min•Ep. 75
We're very excited to be going to this year's European Congress of Mathematics (ECM), which will take place in Seville, Spain, in July! One of the interesting things that happens at an ECM is that the European Mathematical Society (EMS) awards ten prizes to mathematicians who are under the age of 35 at the start of the year the prizes are awarded. When looking through previous winners we noticed that quite a few winners of EMS prizes later go on to win a Fields Medal , one of the highest honours...
May 21, 2024•16 min•Ep. 74
Artificial intelligence is changing our lives. Many of us use the voice activated features on our phones to recognise, understand and fairly complex speech. Students use ChatGPT to do their homework. And doctors use AI algorithms to help diagnose many diseases from medical data. But how is AI changing the lives of mathematicians? In this podcast we speak to Yang-Hui He from the London Institute of Mathematical Sciences about his recent work on the evocatively titled murmuration conjecture . This...
May 15, 2024•18 min•Ep. 73
"The 20th century was the interaction of geometry and physics, and the 21st century is the interaction of number theory with physics." This intriguing insight comes from our recent discussion with Yang-Hui He from the London Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Yang told us an amazing story about the flow of ideas between mathematics and physics, that involves some of the most celebrated achievements in the last century. Yang-Hui He (Photo Rajarshi Maiti – CC BY-SA 4.0 ) You can find out more abo...
May 07, 2024•21 min•Ep. 72
Mathematics is a creative pursuit so it's not surprising that there are communalities between maths and art in all its forms. In this episode we explore the intersection between maths and art with physicist Andrzej Herczyński and mathematician Paul Glendinning . Andrzej Herczyński Andrzej and Paul were two of the organisers of the workshop Space, scale and scaling in art , which recently took place at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge. We find out about the rich d...
Apr 30, 2024•34 min•Ep. 71
One of the most fascinating figures in the history of mathematics was Srinivasa Ramanujan , a self-taught Indian genius who formed a remarkable relationship with the Cambridge mathematician GH Hardy. Ramanujan was interested in problems in number theory, which are often easy to state, but incredibly difficult to prove. One amazing thing about Ramanujan's work is that it still finds applications today, in areas you'd never imagine are linked to number theory. An example is the study of black hole...
Apr 23, 2024•13 min•Ep. 70
In this episode of Maths on the move we look at some favourite pieces of maths we have worked on so far this year. From a revolutionary new tile to new insights in topology, and from fooling cancer cells to bringing mathematical research into the classroom, we hope there's something interesting there for everyone. To find out more about the topics mentioned in this episode see the following articles: A tip of the hat: Celebrating an aperiodic monotile — meeting the discoverers of the hat Contagi...
Apr 16, 2024•24 min•Ep. 69
It's always exciting to have a glimpse at new mathematics and technology as they take shape. In this podcast we talk to Georg Maierhofer , from the University of Oxford, about an exciting new idea that is only just emerging – physics informed neural networks (PINNs for short) – where you add in the laws of physics to machine learning methods. We have been able to sit in on a number of meetings of our colleagues from Maths4DL (the Mathematics for Deep Learning research group) as they explore this...
Apr 09, 2024•23 min•Ep. 68
Last weekend our friends and neighbours at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge put on a great event: the Mathematics Discovery Day , part of the Cambridge Festival. Among the may hands-on activities, games and pop-up explorations were the hugely popular, and well-attended, workshops for students delivered by our colleagues Liz and Charlie from NRICH . Our brilliant colleague Julia Hawkins herded academics and volunteers, juggled props and generally made sure that ...
Mar 26, 2024•24 min•Ep. 67
Artificial intelligence has made astonishing progress in the last few years. Perhaps surprisingly, all of the amazing things we've seen, from ChatGPT to generative AI, are powered by same mathematical technique: machine learning , and in particular deep learning . In this episode of Maths on the move we talk to Kweku Abraham , member of Maths4DL , a research project which investigates deep learning, and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge. Kweku explains how machine learning w...
Mar 19, 2024•26 min•Ep. 66
We’re now all very aware that climate change is not just a problem for the future – 2023 was officially the hottest year on record ever. And as well as impacting our lives through food security, flooding and drought, climate change can also impact our health by the impact it can have on the spread of diseases. A very interesting group of people came together to discuss this in January 2024. Policy makers, climate scientists, epidemiologists and mathematicians met at a workshop at the University ...
Mar 12, 2024•20 min•Ep. 65
Could we make the clouds brighter so they reflect more of the Sun's warming rays back into space to keep us cooler? Or make Arctic ice thicker so it lasts longer over the summer? These ideas might sound slightly fantastical, but they're active research areas at the Centre for Climate Repair which has recently become our neighbour here at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge. In this episode of Maths on the move the Centre's Director of Research, Shaun Fitzgerald , ...
Mar 05, 2024•27 min•Ep. 64
In this, the last episode of Maths on the move for this year, we look back on 2023 and forward to 2024. We talk about some highlights in our coverage of this year's mathematics, and some of the exciting things to come next year. It's a crazy journey featuring breakthroughs in pure maths, the maths of music and Ed Sheeran, renewable energy sources, the maths of justice, and the epidemiology of climate change. We hope you enjoy this final episode of the year and wish you all the best for next year...
Dec 12, 2023•25 min•Ep. 63
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 Operational Research, both of the University of Edinburgh. Both helped to organise an intensive two week "deep dive" workshop on the Mathematics and statisti...
Dec 05, 2023•26 min•Ep. 62
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 plot centres on one of the greatest unsolved problems in mathematics, does P = NP ? Timothy Lanzone , the writer and director, tells us about creatin...
Nov 28, 2023•22 min•Ep. 61
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 hadn't thought of, until 2013 that is, was that he could be the emotional centerpoint of a musical. The universal machine is a musical about Alan Turi...
Nov 21, 2023•30 min•Ep. 60
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 Du Sautoy , who were both involved in the development of the play A disappearing number produced by Complicité. The play explores the fascinating collaboration between the mathematicians GH Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan . Find out how theatre can embody, not just the story of the people involved...
Nov 14, 2023•25 min•Ep. 59
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 friend Ben Allanach , Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge, to find out more. Ben explained the science, gave us his persona...
Nov 07, 2023•22 min•Ep. 57
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 in theatre. For this episode of Maths on the move , which was recorded in 2008, Victoria told us what it's like being an actor and a mathematician an...
Nov 07, 2023•21 min•Ep. 58
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 published this episode back in 2012, as part of our Science fiction, science fact project. David Berman You can also read the articles that accompany this...
Oct 24, 2023•19 min•Ep. 56
