NEWSLETTER

No. 454 January 2016

LMS 150TH ANNIVERSARY

Mathematics festival at the London science mUSEUM
What's your Angle? Uncovering Maths
See report on page 3

SOCIETY MEETINGS AND EVENTS
•
•
•
•
•

26 February: Mary Cartwright Lecture, London page 12
21 March: Society Meeting at the BMC, Bristol page 21
21–25 March: LMS Invited Lectures, Loughborough
8 July: Graduate Student Meeting, London
8 July: Society Meeting, London

NEWSLETTER ONLINE: newsletter.lms.ac.uk

•
•
•
•

21 July: Society Meeting at the 7ECM, Berlin
11 November: Graduate Student Meeting, London
11 November: Annual General Meeting, London
20 December: South West & South Wales Regional
Meeting, Bath@LondMathSoc

LMS NEWSLETTER

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

Contents
No. 454 January 201632

22

150th Anniversary Events
Departmental Celebrations....................18
What's Your Angle? Uncovering Maths...3

2

AwardsChristopher Zeeman Medal 2016...........13
Louis Bachelier Prize 2016........................39
LMS Honorary Membership.....................7
ICME-13 Bursaries....................................19
Ramanujan Prize 2016............................37
Royal Society Medals and Awards 2016...37
Undergraduate Essay Prize.....................37

Calendar of Events

55

LMS Items
Caring Supplementary Grants.................8
Council 2015-16.......................................15
Council Diary............................................8
Grant Schemes.........................................9
Invited Lecture Series 2017.....................27
LMS-CMI Research Schools......................20Longstanding Members..........................15
Prizes 2016...............................................38
Retiring Members of Council...................6LMS Meetings
BMC 2016 – Society Meeting...................21
Mary Cartwright Lecture.........................12
Special General Meeting.........................7

Meetings
Dynamics of Complex Systems................43
From the Grain to the Continuum........40
Groups in Galway 2016.........................45

Heidelberg Laureate Forum..................41
Integrable Systems..................................45
Mathematics Emerging..........................44
Modern Topics in Nonlinear PDE andGeometric Analysis...............................31
Singularities and Applications...............43
Why be Noncommutative?.....................44

News
European News.......................................25
Mathematics Policy Round-up...............23
The Lost Library of John Dee .................22

Obituaries
Cooper, Barry...........................................49
Humphreys, John.....................................49
Roth, Klaus...............................................46

Records of Proceedings
Annual General Meeting andSociety Meeting....................................28

Reports
LMS Annual General Meeting..............32
LMS Graduate Student Meeting............34
The Science of Beauty............................35

Reviews
Inside Interesting Integrals.....................53
The Theory That Would Not Die...........51
Understanding Mathematical Proofs....52

VisitsJacob, Birgit.............................................42
Malyutov, Mikhail...................................42
Rozikov, Utkir..........................................42

newsletter@lms.ac.uk

No. 454 January 2016

At the end of November, the London nalist and navigating a range of real-world
Mathematical Society collaborated withscenarios to discover the many fascinating
the Science Museum, the interactive theatre
ways in which mathematics relates to everyday
company non zero one, and a number of UK uni- modern life. The scenarios were brought toversity research groups to create an immersive
life by mathematics researchers from a variety
mathematics Festival titled What's Your Angle? of UK universities and actors dressed as track
Uncovering Maths.
athletes, oceanographers, archaeologists, govThe Festival took place between 25 and ernment intelligence officers and dairy farmers
29 November 2015 in the Science Museum’s – all talking about how they use mathematics in
Wellcome Wing Basement Gallery. The four-day their lines of work.
event comprised an adults-only (Calcu)Lates
Following an induction from the NEWS-Aevent – featuring a talk by Sir Roger Penrose
RAMA! boss in the ‘Briefing Room’, each underand a screening of a documentary by Heidi cover journalist was sent on four fact-finding
Morstang – a schools day, and two public days. missions, during which they had to gather asOver 1,600 people in total visited.
much mathematical information as they could
Visitors were tasked with assuming the rolefrom the actors and researchers and record itof a fictional undercover NEWS-A-RAMA! jour- all in their notebooks. They then had to taketheir notes to an editors’desk, flesh out a news story,
and at the end give a news
interview – in a convincingly-styled newsroom – basedon what they’d learnt. The
news
interviews
werestreamed live into a media
station at the centre of theroom for all to see.   
The Festival’s principal
aim was to demonstratethat mathematics is everywhere and for everyone,
and therein challenge thecommon perception ofSimon Tavaré introducing Roger Penrose
Editorial team

Publication dates and deadlines

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk
Editorial officeLondon Mathematical Society,
De Morgan House, 57–58 Russell
Square, London WC1B 4HS(t: 020 7637 3686;
f: 020 7323 3655)

General Editor
Mr A.J.S. Mann(a.mann@gre.ac.uk)

Events calendar
Updates and corrections tocalendar@lms.ac.uk

Reviews Editor
Professor D. Singerman(d.singerman@soton.ac.uk)

ArticlesSend articles to
newsletter@lms.ac.uk

Administrative Editor
S.M. Oakes(newsletter@lms.ac.uk)

Advertising
For rates and guidelines see
newsletter.lms.ac.uk/rate-card

Typeset by the LMS at De
Morgan House; printed by
Holbrooks Printers Ltd.

Reports Editor
Professor I. A. Stewart(i.a.stewart@durham.ac.uk)

Published monthly, except August. Items and advertisements by the first day of the month prior to publication, or the closest preceding working day. Notices
and advertisements are not accepted for events that
occur in the first week of the publication month.
News items and notices in the Newsletter may befreely used elsewhere unless otherwise stated, although attribution is requested when reproducing
whole articles. Contributions to the Newsletter are
made under a non-exclusive licence; please contact
the author or photographer for the rights to reproduce. The LMS cannot accept responsibility for theaccuracy of information in the Newsletter. Views
expressed do not necessarily represent the views orpolicy of the London Mathematical Society.
Charity registration number: 252660.

3

LMS Items

LMS NEWSLETTER

4

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

mathematics as esoteric. Above all, the Societyschool students to academics. It was fascinating
and museum wanted each visitor to leave withto see the broad spectrum of research presented
the knowledge that mathematics is relevant, at the Festival. We were also very impressed byfun, and with a particular nod to the visiting
the smooth organisation of such a major event
school students, capable of opening doors to a and the helpfulness and enthusiasm of everyone
wide range of fulfilling careers.
involved. The combination of art and mathPostgraduate mathematicians from across the ematics gave it a new twist, bringing maths to
UK provided the content through the event inlife in an engaging way’.
the form of eight research groups that demonPhilip Aston, from the University of Surrey,
strated the mathematics behind each undercov- expressed a similar view, saying, ‘As a mathemaer scenario. The Society would like to extend its
tician I thought that the Mathematics Festival atparticular thanks and gratitude to those teams: the Science Museum was a great opportunityfrom the University of Brighton, the University
to showcase some of the work that mathematiof Cambridge, University College London, thecians do and how their work can have an impact
University of Essex, the University of Kent, King's on all our lives.
College London, the University of Liverpool, the‘Our exhibit allowed participants to see theirOpen University and the University of Surrey.
dynamic cardiomorph that we generated andSpeaking to the LMS after the event, Mareika displayed on the TV screens from their own
Haberichter, from the University of Kent, said, cardiac data. The cardiomorph is a bit like a‘We had an amazing weekend at the immersive ‘selfie of the heart’, which uses all the data (inLMS Festival at the Science Museum. We contrast to many other methods) and has thedesigned interactive activities to engage thepotential for diagnosing a range of heart conpublic with our research in solitons as they went ditions, including septic shock which currently
undercover at Coral Beach Surf School. Solitons results in 37,000 deaths in the UK each year.
are a unique type of wave and a specialism of‘There was a real buzz down in the basement
many mathematics lecturers at Kent. These and we certainly enjoyed talking about ourwaves can travel for great distances without work. It was fascinating to see some of theslowing down or changing their shape.
feedback in the TV interviews at the end as well’.
‘We appreciated the opportunity to pitch our
The NEWS-A-RAMA! theme was particularly
research to such a broad audience ranging from
popular, both with the research groups andthe visitors. Anonymouscomments
leftbymembers of the public
were
unanimously
positive, including ‘It was
great to see how maths
applies to real world situations’, ‘My favourite thing
was seeing how maths isin everything’, ‘Maths getsa 10/10 from me’, and ‘I
think I fancy becoming amathematician now’!
Anna Lambert, of the
UCL Fluid Dynamics group,also thought the theme
was apt, commenting,‘The news concept really
The NEWS-A-RAMA! briefing room, where visitors were told of their role and given
their task before entering the exhibition
made it work – seeing kids

newsletter@lms.ac.uk

No. 454 January 2016

(known as quasicrystals) in theearly 1980s. It is particularly
well suited for public engagement, due to the visual appealof the subject and the possibility to explain non-trivial mathematics in terms of intuitive
concepts around tilings andpatterns.
‘The LMS's 150th anniversary
Festival at the Science Museum
was a fantastic opportunity tobring this fascinating topic to
the attention of the public, andgive them the opportunity to
Fluid dynamics research was used to solve the problem of a wobbly Millennium
engage in hands-on activities,
Bridge (demonstrated here by the UCL group led by Anna Lambert)
exploring its intricate features’.
talk about difficult mathematical concepts on TV
Simon Tavaré, President of the LMS, noted
and getting it right was incredible. It was greatthat Sir Roger's fascinating talk was given on
fun working with the Science Museum and non
the day of the 100th anniversary of the publicazero one to develop our idea. The best bit for us
tion of Einstein's work on general relativity.
was seeing the public excitedly explaining ourJohn Hunter, from the theatre company
work on TV - and getting it all right!
non zero one, said, ‘It has been great to make‘We found that people were really intrigued another Festival at the Science Museum. Onceby how mathematical ideas like resonant again we’ve enjoyed learning a lot, this time
frequency and synchronisation help explain
with the LMS, who have generously and enimportant phenomena like the oscillation of thusiastically thought about how to commuthe Millennium and Tacoma Narrows bridges. nicate a wide range of UK mathematics to theBringing modern mathematical research to the
Science Museum audience. Can solitons be acgeneral public was the perfect way to celebrate cessible to nine year-olds? The number of news
the 150th birthday of the LMS’.
broadcasts on N24 (the Festival’s news channel)
A number of researchers and visitors weretalking about “waves that go on and on” would
also impressed by the breadth and quality of suggest they can! The same goes for the work of
research presented, saying it helped both to all the groups - it was fantastic for us to see themaintain the interest of the visitors as well as
level of engagement so high across the board’.
get the main point across that mathematics isWill Hunter, project lead at the Scienceubiquitous in modern life. In addition to cardio- Museum, also wished to thank the Society formorphs, waves and solitons, and fluid dynamics, its involvement, adding, ‘This Festival has been
the subjects on offer ranged from aperiodic a fantastic experience for me and I’ve learnt atiling, speech modelling, fractals and pendulums, great deal along the way. Through my public
GPS and triangulation, and damaged spines and engagement work I’d never had the opportunitissue development.
ty to use mathematics or, in fact, work with such
Uwe Grimm, a researcher from the Open Uni- a broad set of research groups so it was very
versity’s aperiodic tiling group, said, ‘The theory rewarding. Our feedback has been amazingof aperiodic order is a relatively recent area of and being able to see the public spend suchcontemporary mathematics, which was inspired extended periods of time engaging with mathsby mathematical inventions such as Roger was such a great experience. I want to thank thePenrose's famous tiling in the 1970s as well as by London Mathematical Society for giving us thethe discovery of aperiodically ordered materials opportunity to produce this Festival’.

5

LMS Items

LMS NEWSLETTER

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

RETIRING MEMBERS OF COUNCILTERRY LYONS (President)

6

After serving as President for two years,
Professor Terry Lyons, FRS, handed over thebadge of office at the AGM on 13 November
2015.   Prior to taking   up office, Professor
Lyons had a long history of service with theSociety. He had served as Vice-President from2000 to 2002. Other service included being
an Editor and serving as a member of boththe Programme Committee and the Publications Committee. Professor Lyons is awell-respected member of the mathematicalcommunity and his drive and efforts acrossthe Society’s wide remit of activities havebeen enormously valuable in helping theSociety to deliver its planned objectives andto develop new directions.
President Professor Lyons has been active
in promoting an appreciation of mathematics and mathematicians to our culture andsociety and has helped the translation ofthat understanding into actions and support
that build the mathematics for tomorrow.
Over the past two years, Professor Lyons
has been instrumental in guiding the Society
through a very important time in its history,
namely the 150th Anniversary celebrations,which took place in 2015. During the year,
Professor Lyons used the focus of the celebrations as a tool to create momentum formathematics. The 150th Anniversary of theSociety has provided many opportunities
to stimulate interest and justified respectfor mathematics, and with Professor Lyons’belief that mathematics has an impact on
everyday life in many unexpected ways hehas directed the Society, with its incredible
tradition and a membership that includes somany creative mathematical scientists, withvision and foresight.
Professor Lyons has held the office ofPresident during an incredibly busy and successful period in the Society’s history, supporting research, creating awareness, influencing research and education policy andfunding for mathematical sciences in the
UK. He has put in place a legacy develop-

ment programme to build an influential
network of supporters and to raise funds for
the Society to meet its charitable aims andserve UK mathematics more generally. There
continues to be challenges for mathematicalsciences research policy in the UK. During his
tenure, Professor Lyons has led the Society
in dealing with a range of important issues,
including the Dowling Review of Businessand University Research collaborations andthe Nurse Review of the Research Councils,
and has met with Science Ministers and othergovernment representatives to further thecause of mathematics.
Professor Lyons has represented the Society
with distinction, both in the UK and abroad.
During his presidency he was very active internationally. He led the LMS delegation to
the 2014 International Congress of Mathematicians in South Korea and represented theSociety at a number of European meetingsand high-profile awards ceremonies.
He has been actively involved in a wide
range of LMS business and has provided
the Society with inspirational leadershipand strong direction during its Anniversary
year. His enthusiasm and leadership have
set the Society on a path which it is hoped
will provide a lasting legacy from the Anniversary, not only for the Society but for UK
mathematics as a whole.
The Society would like to thank Professor
Lyons for his dedicated service and wishes
him well for the future. At the AGM,
Professor Lyons handed over the badge of
Presidential Office to Professor Simon Tavaré,
FRS.

REBECCA HOYLE, ELIZABETH
MANSFIELD AND MICHAELSINGER (Members-at-Large)
Professor Rebecca Hoyle, Professor Elizabeth
Mansfield and Professor Michael Singer
stepped down as Members-at-Large ofCouncil at the 2015 AGM. Council wishes torecognise and thank them for the service
they have given to the Society and to thenewsletter@lms.ac.uk

wider mathematical community.
Professor Hoyle was elected to Council in2014 and steps down to pursue other commitments. Professor Mansfield was elected
to Council in 2011. Professor Mansfieldhas been an active member of ProgrammeCommittee since 2012 and will continue hermembership of this committee. She has beena strong advocate for the increased participation of female mathematicians as speakers

No. 454 January 2016

at mathematics conferences in the UK andabroad. Professor Singer has been an active
member of the Research Policy Committee
since 2012 and will continue in this role. His
experience has been valuable across the wide
range of committee business.
The LMS thanks them all for the broad andvaried support that they have given to theSociety in achieving its charitable aims andsupporting mathematics more generally.

LMS HONORARY MEMBERSHIP – JOHN H. CONWAY
At the General Meeting on 13 November 2015,
the Society elected John Conway (Princeton)an Honorary Member of the Society.
John Horton Conway is a remarkable mathematician who has made significant contributions to many branches of Mathematics,
including algebra, number theory, logic, knot
theory and recreational mathematics. To al-

gebraists he is probably best known for his
elegant construction of the three Conway
groups acting on the 24-dimensional Leechlattice, but his many ingenious contributions to
Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games column
in the Scientific American, and in particular his
invention of the Game of Life, have made him
a mathematical celebrity to a wider public.

LMS SPECIAL GENERAL MEETING
On 10 November 2015, the Council of the LMS received a request for a Special
General Meeting from thirty members of the Society.  In accordance with the
Statutes of the Society, a Special General Meeting will be held.
The Special General Meeting will take place at 15:30 on 5 February 2016 in the
Paget Room at BMA House, Tavistock Square, London, WC1H 9JP.
The object of the meeting, as stated in the requisition, shall be to consider
the reversal of the LMS Council's decision to close down the LMS Journal ofComputation and Mathematics.
The LMS Statutes require that 21 days’ notice is given to all members of thebusiness of the meeting. Further notice detailing the specific business will
follow.

7

LMS Items

LMS NEWSLETTER

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

LMS extends CARING GRANTS
The LMS Women in Mathematics Committee
has agreed to amend the guidelines of theSociety’s Childcare Supplementary Grants
Scheme to allow applications to support‘caring’ costs more widely.   The new ‘Caring
Supplementary Grants Scheme’ will allow
mathematicians to apply for financial support
for the costs of, for example, childcare or
caring for elderly or disabled relatives whenattending conferences, research schools,
meetings or visits.
It is the LMS view that institutions andevent organisers should make provision forsuch caring costs and the Women in Math-ematics Committee actively encourages themto do so, but, while this is not largely the case,the Society is willing to make a supplementary grant as a contribution to the costs.
Institutions concerned about the taxability of such costs should refer to the Athena
Forum’s Statement on taxes exemption forchildcare costs incurred while undertaking
work-related training (athenaforum.org.uk/
athena-forum-statements/).
Further information on the Caring Supplementary Grants and details on how to apply
can be found on the LMS website (lms.ac.uk/
grants/caring-supplementary-grants).

LMS COUNCIL DIARY
8

13 November 2015
A personal view
For me the day of a Council meeting begins
with an early breakfast.  The train journey toPaddington usually allows enough time toread the Council papers.   Though there haveoften been minor delays, in the end I always
get to De Morgan House just in time for acoffee before the meeting begins.   But nottoday, slippery rails, a ‘platform with issues’at Swindon and the usual delays on the Circle
Line, meant I arrived a few minutes late.  Butfortunately, and unusually, today Council
began a little late too.
The President reported that a Special General
Meeting would be held to reconsider the
closure of the LMS Journal of Computationand Mathematics, following a request for sucha meeting from more than 20 members of theSociety. The meeting would be convened, as
required under the Statutes, within 28 daysof the receipt of the letter.   The President
presented to Council a letter that he had sent
to the signatories with further details on theCouncil’s decision.  It was agreed to place thisletter on the blog and to circulate it to LMS
Representatives.
Council members were provided with a copyof the contract with Wiley with very recentchanges indicated in red.   In addition, someminor changes had been made by our publications lawyer in order to ensure compliancewith the latest data protection legislation.  ThePublications Secretary answered queries about
the revised draft.  After some discussion (and abrief pause when the sudden arrival of Storm
Abigail required one of the french windowsof the Hardy Room to be locked shut) the
President signed the contract; copies werehanded to Wiley’s representatives for signinglater that afternoon.   This has been the culmination of a huge amount of work over thelast two years, particularly on the part of theSociety’s Publisher Susan Hezlet and the Publication Secretary John Hunton.  More work will,of course, be required in the transition until
Wiley take over from OUP at the beginning of2017.
During the year, each of the Society’s committees must report to Council on its activities.  
This time it was the turn, amongst others, ofthe Women in Mathematics Committee.   Inpresenting a written report, outgoing chairGwyneth Stallard commented on the progress
which had been made in the last 10 years.  
There were now four mathematics depart-newsletter@lms.ac.uk

No. 454 January 2016

ments with Athena Silver awards and 26 with
Hoyle, Elizabeth Mansfield and Michael Singer
Bronze awards, eight of them being gained
who were leaving Council.  Incoming President,
this year.
Simon Tavaré, then thanked Terry Lyons for his
The Holgate Scheme, which funds lectures
service to the Society during his presidency.
and workshops in schools that enrich and
The meeting finished in time for the shortenhance mathematical education, was re- walk up the street to the BMA for the Society’s
launched this year.   Education Secretary AGM at which Simon Tavaré was to take over
Alice Rogers reported that it had been a as President, and Terry Lyons would give hisgreat success, with more applications thanPresidential Address.   For those of us up for
the Education Committee was able to fund.   re-election we would discover whether we
Council agreed to increase the budget for thiswould be back for the next Council meeting
scheme by £1,350.
in February.   In my case it had already been
In winding up the last Council meeting of his agreed that, whether or not I was to be sucterm of office President Terry Lyons thanked the cessful in the ballot, after two years it was time
Society’s staff, particularly during the 150th an- to pass on the diarist’s pen. So this concludes
niversary year.  This had been a period of stressmy final Council Diary.
but of great success.  He also thanked Rebecca
Francis Clarke

LMS GRANT SCHEMES
Please note that the deadline for Research
Grant Applications has been brought forward
to 22 January 2016.
Applications are invited for the following
grants:Conferences (Scheme 1)
Grants of up to £7,000 are available toprovide partial support for conferences
held in the United Kingdom. This includes
a maximum of £4,000 for principal speakers,£2,000 to support the attendance of research
students who are studying at universities in
the UK, and £1,000 to support the attendance of participants from Scheme 5 or former
Soviet Union countries.
Celebrating new appointments (Scheme 1)
Grants of up to £600 are available to provide
partial support for meetings held in the
United Kingdom to celebrate the new appointment of a lecturer at a UK university.
Postgraduate Research Conferences(Scheme 8)
Grants of up to £4,000 are available to provide
partial support for conferences held in the
United Kingdom, which are organised by andare for postgraduate research students.
Visits to the UK (Scheme 2)
Grants of up to £1,500 are available toprovide partial support for a visitor to theUK, who will give lectures in at least three
separate institutions. Awards are made to thehost towards the travel, accommodation andsubsistence costs of the visitor.
Research in Pairs (Scheme 4)
Grants of up to £1,200 are available to support
a visit for collaborative research either by the
grant holder to another institution abroad,or by a named mathematician from abroadto the home base of the grant holder. Grants
of up to £600 are available to support a visit
for collaborative research either by the grant
holder to another institution within the UK,
or by a named mathematician from within
the UK to the home base of the grant holder.
International Short Visits (Scheme 5)
Grants of up to £3,000 are available tosupport a visit for collaborative research bya named mathematician from a country inAfrica (or countries where mathematics isin a similar position) to the home base of

9

LMS Items

LMS NEWSLETTER

10

the grant holder. Grants of up to £2,000 are
available to support a visit for collaborative
research by the grant holder to a country inAfrica (or countries where mathematics is ina similar position).
For full details of these grant schemes, andto download application forms, please visit
the LMS website: www.lms.ac.uk/content/
research-grants.
• Applications received by 22 January
2016 will be considered at a meeting in
February.
• Applications should be submitted wellin advance of the date of the event for
which funding is requested.
• Normally grants are not made for events
which have already happened or where
insufficient time has been allowed forprocessing of the application.
Queries regarding applications can beaddressed to the Grants Administrator(see below) who will be pleased to discuss
proposals informally with potential applicants and give advice on the submission of an
application.
Grants Administrators: Anthony Byrne, 0207
927 0807, email: grants@lms.ac.uk.

OTHER LMS GRANTS AND FUNDING
Research Workshop Grants
The Society offers grants to support ResearchWorkshops held in the UK. Requests forsupport (for travel and subsistence of participants, and reasonable associated costs) in
the range £1,000-£10,000 will be considered.
The maximum award is £10,000, but a typicalaward is in the range of £3,000-£5,000. Applications for partial support of workshops withother sources of support will be considered.
Applications should normally be submitted
12 months in advance of the proposed
workshop.   For further information visit:  
www.lms.ac.uk/content/research-workshopsgrants.
150th Anniversary Postdoctoral Mobility
Grants 2016-17
Next deadline: 31 March 2016
The Society will award grants up to £9,200

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk
to mathematicians of excellent promise.
The purpose of the grants is to support a
period of study and research in mathematics between three and six months in theacademic year 2015-16 at one or more institutions other than the holder’s home institution (the grant holder’s home institution
may be included for applicants with circumstances that make moving impractical, please
see the website for the full guidelines). They
are intended to support promising researchers during the transitional period between
having submitted their thesis and the startof their first post-doctoral employment.  Thevalue of the grant will be calculated at £1,200
per month plus a travel allowance of up to£2,000.  For more information and an application form, please visit: www.lms.ac.uk/grants/
postdoc-mobility-grants.
Undergraduate Research Bursaries inMathematics 2015
Next deadline: 4 February 2016
Open to Undergraduate Students in the intermediate years (i.e. 2/3, 2/4 or 3/4) of their undergraduate degree to undertake the project
during the summer vacation.   Students inthe final year of their degree intending toundertake a taught Masters degree immediately following their undergraduate degree
may apply.   (First-year undergraduates are
not eligible).   The purpose of the awards
is to give experience of research to undergraduates with research potential and toencourage them to consider a career in scientific research.  The awards provide support
for the student at a rate of £180 per week(or £190 per week in London), for a periodof between six and eight weeks.   For more
information and an application form, please
visit: www.lms.ac.uk/grants/undergraduateresearch-bursaries.
Spitalfields Days
Next deadline: 31 January 2016
Grants of up to £1,000 are available tosupport an LMS Spitalfields Day, which havebeen run since 1987 and are in honour of theSociety’s predecessor, the Spitalfields Math-newsletter@lms.ac.uk

ematical Society (1717-1845).   A Spitalfields
Day is a one-day meeting, which is usuallyassociated with a long-term symposium ona specialist topic at a UK university. Selectedparticipants, often distinguished experts
from overseas, give survey lectures (or othertypes of lecture accessible to a general mathematical audience) on topics in the field of
the symposium.   Please see the website forfurther details: www.lms.ac.uk/content/spitalfields-days.
Grace Chisholm Young Fellowship
Next deadline: 31 December 2016
The Society offers two fellowships of £1,000(consisting of £500 personal support and £500
contribution to a host institution) each year
to mathematicians who need support when
their mathematical career is interrupted byfamily responsibilities, relocation of partner,or other similar circumstance.
These fellowships, named after Grace
Chisholm Young, aim to provide some
support, making possible some continuous
mathematical activity, so enabling the fellow
to be in a position to apply for posts whencircumstances allow. The Fellowship will givean endorsement of the holder's status as amathematician, so that the break in formal
employment should not prevent them fromresuming a career as a mathematician at
a later stage.   Please see the website forfurther details: www.lms.ac.uk/grants/gracechisholm-young-fellowships.
Small Grants for Education
Next deadline: 31 January 2016
Funding for grants up to £800 is available tostimulate interest and enable involvement
in mathematics from Key Stage 1 (age 5+)
to Postgraduate level and beyond.   Anyone
working/based in the UK is eligible to apply
for a grant. If the applicant is not a member
then the application must be countersignedby an LMS member or another suitableperson such as a Head teacher or seniorcolleague.  Please see the website for further
details: www.lms.ac.uk/content/small-grantseducation.

No. 454 January 2016

Teacher CPD Grants
Next deadline: 31 January 2016
Funding for grants up to £400 is available toprovide opportunities for mathematics teachers
to attend training which is specifically mathematical.  It is intended to facilitate mathematical professional development to allow teachersin UK schools/educational institutions to:a) Develop their subject knowledge.
b) Engage in a deeper understanding of how todevelop mathematical thinkingc) Appreciate the interconnectivity of mathematical topicsd) Update themselves on mathematics curriculum reforme) Use technology when and where appropriate
Please see the website for further details:
http://www.lms.ac.uk/grants/teacher-cpd-grants
Computer Science Small Grants (Scheme 7)
Next deadline: 15 April 2016
Funding for grants up to £500 is available tosupport a visit for collaborative research at
the interface of Mathematics and Computer
Science either by the grant holder to anotherinstitution within the UK or abroad, or by anamed mathematician from within the UK or
abroad to the home base of the grant holder.  
Please see the website for further details: www.
lms.ac.uk/content/computer-science-smallgrants-scheme-7.
Caring Supplementary Grants
Next deadline: 31 January 2016
Grants of up to £200 are available to parents
and carers working in mathematics to help
with the cost of childcare when attending a
conference or research meeting.   The Society
believes that all parents working in mathematics should be able to attend conferences andresearch meetings without being hindered bychildcare costs.   Institutions are expected tomake provision for childcare costs and parents
are encouraged to make enquiries.   However,where this is not available, the Society administers a Childcare Supplementary Grants Scheme.  
Please see the website for further details: www.
lms.ac.uk/content/childcare-supplementarygrants.

11

LMS NEWSLETTER

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

MARY CARTWRIGHT LECTURE
AND SOCIETY MEETING
Friday 26 February 2016
De Morgan House, 57-58 Russell Square, London, WC1B 4HS

123.30 Opening Lecture

Lasse Rempe-Gillen (University ofLiverpool)
Hairs, dreadlocks and Cantor bouquets

4.30 Tea
5.00 Mary Cartwright Lecture

Gwyneth Stallard (Open University)
Pits, gaps and spiders' webs

6.00 Wine reception

To register
For all event enquiries please contact Katy Henderson (womeninmaths@lms.
ac.uk) by Friday 19 February. Late registrations for places may still be accepted,
subject to availability.
The reception will be followed by a dinner at the Thistle Bloomsbury Park Hotel,
at a cost of £35 per person, inclusive of wine.
There are limited funds available to contribute in part to the expenses ofmembers of the Society or research students to attend the meeting.

newsletter@lms.ac.uk

No. 454 January 2016

CHRISTOPHER ZEEMAN MEDAL 2016
CALL FOR NOMINATIONSThe Councils of the LMS and the IMA are delighted to invite nominations for the2016 award of the Christopher Zeeman Medal, which is the UK award dedicated torecognising excellence in the communication of mathematics.
The IMA and the LMS wish to honour mathematicians who have excelled inpromoting mathematics and engaging with the general public.   They may beacademic mathematicians based in universities, mathematics school teachers, industrial mathematicians, those working in the financial sector or indeed mathematicians from any number of other fields.
Most importantly, these mathematicians will have worked exceptionally to bringmathematics to a non-specialist audience, whether it is through giving public
lectures, writing books, appearing on radio or television, organising events or
through an entirely separate medium.   The LMS and IMA want to celebrate theachievements of mathematicians who work to inspire others with their work.
The award is named after Professor Sir Christopher Zeeman, FRS, president of the
LMS between 1986 and 1988.   His notable career has been pioneering not onlyin the fields of topology and catastrophe theory but also because of his groundbreaking work in bringing his beloved mathematics to the wider public.  Sir Christopher was the first mathematician to be asked to deliver the Royal Institution
Christmas Lectures in 1978, a full 160 years since they began.  His Mathematics into
Pictures lectures have been cited by many young UK mathematicians as their inspiration.  In recognition of both his work as a mathematician and his contribution
to the UK mathematics community, Sir Christopher received the LMS-IMA David
Crighton Medal in 2006.
A form for nominations is available at www.ima.org.uk/zeeman2016nomination.html or from Alison Penry at: Institute of Mathematics and its Applications,
Catherine Richards House, 16 Nelson Street, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, SS1 1EF; oremail alison.penry@ima.org.uk.
Nominations must be received by 28 February 2016.

13

LMS Items

LMS NEWSLETTER

14

Professor Simon Tavaré
President
University of Cambridge

Professor Ken Brown
Vice President
University of Glasgow

Professor Iain
Stewart
Programme Secretary
University of Durham

Professor John Hunton
Publications Secretary
University of Durham

Dr Tara Brendle
Member-at-Large
University of Glasgow

Dr Francis Clarke
Member-at-Large
University of Swansea

Professor Sam Howison
Member-at-Large
University of Oxford

Dr Diane Maclagan
Member-at-Large
University of Warwick

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

Professor John Greenlees
Vice President
University of Sheffield

Professor Stephen Huggett
Professor Rob Curtis
General Secretary
Treasurer
University of Plymouth
University of Birmingham

Professor Alice Rogers Professor June Barrow-Green Professor David Evans
Member-at-Large
Librarian (Member-at-Large)
Education Secretary
University of East Anglia
Open University
King’s College, London

Dr Tony GardinerMember-at-Large

Professor Alexandre Borovik
Member-at-Large
University of Manchester

Dr Cathy Hobbs
Member-at-Large
University of theWest of England

Professor Beatrice
PelloniMember-at-Large
University of Reading

Professor Gwyneth Stallard
Member-at-Large
Open University

Dr Alina Vdovina
Member-at-Large
University of Newcastle

newsletter@lms.ac.uk

No. 454 January 2016

LMS COUNCIL 2015-16
As a result of the annual election in November 2015, membership of the Council is as follows(see photographs on the previous page):
President
Vice-Presidents
Treasurer
General Secretary
Programme Secretary
Publications Secretary
Education Secretary
Member-at-Large (Librarian)Members-at-Large of Council

Professor S. Tavaré (University of Cambridge)
Professor K.A. Brown, FRSE (University of Glasgow)
Professor J.P.C. Greenlees (University of Sheffield)
Professor R.T. Curtis (University of Birmingham)
Professor S.A. Huggett (University of Plymouth)
Professor I.A. Stewart (University of Durham)
Professor J.R. Hunton (University of Durham)
Professor F.A. Rogers (King’s College London)
Professor J.E. Barrow-Green (Open University)*Professor A.V. Borovik (University of Manchester)*Dr T.E. Brendle (University of Glasgow)
Dr F.W. Clarke (University of Swansea)– elected to a one-year term
Professor D.M. Evans (Imperial College London)– elected to a one-year term
Dr A.D. Gardiner*Dr C.A. Hobbs (University of the West of England)
Professor S. Howison (University of Oxford)
Dr D. Maclagan (University of Warwick)*Professor B. Pelloni (University of Reading)Professor G.M. Stallard (Open University)
Dr A. Vdovina (University of Newcastle)* Members continuing the second year of their two-year election in 2014.

LMS Nominating Committee
Also at the AGM, Sarah Rees (University of Newcastle) and Ursula Martin (University of Oxford)
were elected to the Nominating Committee for three year terms of office.
Continuing members of the Nominating Committee are John Toland (Chair), Martin Bridson,
Stephen Donkin, Paul Glendinning and Alex Wilkie.  Council will also appoint a representative.

LONGSTANDING MEMBERS
The following is a list of the one hundred
Of these sixty five have completed more thanand forty six members who have
55 years, thirty one have completed 60 years
completed 50 years or more of member- or more and nine have completed 65 years
ship of the London Mathematical Society.   or more.
DATE OF ELECTIONNAMEDATE OF ELECTION

NAMEElected more than 65 years ago

18 Mar 1948

Isaacs, G.L.

17 Mar 1943

Dyson, F.J.

18 Mar 1948

Reade, M.O.

15 Jun 1944

Williams, A.E.

13 Dec 1948

Fishel, B.

23 May 1946

Huppert, E.L.

20 Jan 1949

Borwein, D.

20 Mar 1947

Hayman, W.K.

23 Mar 1950

Ponting, F.W.

15

LMS Items

LMS NEWSLETTERDATE OF ELECTION

16

NAME

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk
DATE OF ELECTION

NAMEElected more than 60 years ago

19 Dec 1957

Monk, D.

20 Dec 1951

Dowker, Y.N.

19 Dec 1957

Newman, M.F.

17 Jan 1952

Wilson, D.H.

20 Mar 1958

Keedwell, D.

15 Feb 1952

Shephard, G.C.

20 Mar 1958

Wallace, D.A.R.

20 Mar 1952

Swinnerton-Dyer, H.P.F.

17 Apr 1958

Macdonald, I.G.

18 Dec 1952

Reeve, J.E.

15 May 1958

Foster, D.M.E.

18 Jun 1953

Marstrand, J.M.

17 Dec 1958

De Barra, G.

18 Jun 1953

Rayner, M.E.

18 Dec 1958

Birch, B.J.

17 Dec 1953

Ringrose, J.R.

15 Jan 1959

Blackburn, N.

17 Dec 1953

Samet, P.A.

16 Apr 1959

Burgess, D.A.

21 Jan 1954

Zeeman, E.C.

16 Apr 1959

Manogue, J.F.

18 Feb 1954

Cohen, D.E.

21 May 1959

Ingram, G.

18 Feb 1954

James, I.M.

18 Jun 1959

Carter, R.W.

18 Mar 1954

Gould, G.G.

17 Dec 1959

Eames, W.P.

17 Jun 1954

Taylor, S.J.

17 Dec 1959

Hoskins, R.F.

25 Nov 1954

Amson, J.C.

17 Dec 1959

West, A.

27 Jan 1955

Atiyah, M.F.

17 Mar 1960

Guy, R.K.

24 Feb 1955

Rayner, F.J.

17 Mar 1960

Harris, D.J.

24 Mar 1955

Farahat, H.K.

18 Mar 1960

Scourfield, E.J.

12 May  1955

Harrop, R.

18 Mar 1960

Strauss, D.

12 May  1955

Murdoch, B.H.

19 May 1960

Hoare, A.H.M.

12 May 1955

Wall, G.E.

17 Nov 1960

Morris, A.O.

15 Dec 1955

Armitage, J.V.

15 Dec 1960

Turner-Smith, R.F.

Elected more than 55 years ago

Elected more than 50 years ago

19 Jan 1956

Bowers, J.F.

16 Mar 1961

Rhodes, F.

15 Mar 1956

Edmunds, D.E.

18 May 1961

Sklar, A.

19 Apr 1956

Penrose, R.

15 Jun 1961

Button, L.G.

14 Jun 1956

Perry, R.L.

15 Jun 1961

Dey, I.M.S.

15 Nov 1956

Edwards, D.A.

15 Jun 1961

Dlab, V.

14 Mar 1957

Brown, R.

15 Jun 1961

Robertson, S.A.

13 Jun 1957

Brown, A.L.

16 Nov 1961

Croft, H.T.

18 Jun 1957

Russell, D.C.

21 Dec 1961

Barry, P.D.

21 Nov 1957

Wallington, J.E.

21 Dec 1961

Davies, R.O.

19 Dec 1957

Longdon, L.W.

21 Dec 1961

Rutter, J.W.

19 Dec 1957

Mohamed, I.J.

21 Dec 1961

Sands, A.D.

newsletter@lms.ac.uk

No. 454 January 2016

DATE OF ELECTIONNAMEDATE OF ELECTION

NAME

21 Dec 1961

Wall, C.T.C.

21 Nov 1963

Bechtell, H.F.

18 Jan 1962

Ezeilo, J.O.C.

21 Nov 1963

Curtis, C.W.

18 Jan 1962

Kingman, J.F.C.

21 Nov 1963

Eggan, L.C.

15 Mar 1962

Baumslag, B.

21 Nov 1963

Lowe, P.G.

26 Apr 1962

Cohn, J.H.E.

19 Dec 1963

Gani, J.M.

26 Apr 1962

Williams, S.O.

19 Dec 1963

Heywood, P.

17 May 1962

Lue, A.S.T.

19 Dec 1963

Knowles, J.D.

17 May 1962

Mullin, A.A

19 Dec 1963

Watters, J.F.

17 May 1962

Thompson, A.C.

16 Jan 1964

Craven, B.D.

21 Jun 1962

Peters, J.E.

16 Jan 1964

Shawyer, B.L.R.

15 Nov 1962

Riles, J.B.

16 Jan 1964

Steer, B.F.

15 Nov 1962

Gaffney, M.P.

21 May 1964

Brown, W.G.

20 Dec 1962

Douglas, A.J.

25 Jun 1964

Erdos, J.A.

20 Dec 1962

Roberts, J.B.

19 Nov 1964

Evans, E.A.

20 Dec 1962

Wallace, E.W.

19 Nov 1964

Roseblade, J.E.

20 Dec 1962

Pears, A.R.

19 Nov 1964

Vincent-Smith, G.F.

17 Jan 1963

Beardon, A.F.

16 Dec 1964

Larman, D.G.

17 Jan 1963

Blyth, T.S.

16 Dec 1964

Nelson, R.

17 Jan 1963

Dugdale, J.K.

16 Dec 1964

Reid, G.A.

17 Jan 1963

Epstein, D.B.A.

17 Dec 1964

Ledgard, R.

17 Jan 1963

Garling, D.J.H.

17 Dec 1964

Morton, H.R.

17 Jan 1963

Piper, F.C.

17 Dec 1964

Neumann, P.M.

17 Jan 1963

Robinson, W.J.

21 Jan 1965

Kegel, O.H.

17 Jan 1963

Whittington, J.E.

21 Jan 1965

Walker, G.

18 Apr 1963

Bernau, S.J.

10 Apr 1965

Batty, J.C.R.

18 Apr 1963

Sutherland, W.A.

20 May 1965

Hirst, K.E.

15 May 1963

Ault, J.C.

17 Jun 1965

Dodson, M.M.

16 May 1963

Harte, R.E.

17 Jun 1965

McGregor, M.T.

16 May 1963

Lee, P.

18 Nov 1965

Gardiner, C.F.

16 May 1963

Sondheimer, E.H.

18 Nov 1965

Giblin, P.J.

16 May 1963

Weinmann, A.

18 Nov 1965

Harvey, W.J.

16 May 1963

White, D.J.

18 Nov 1965

Reade, J.B.

20 Jun 1963

Duren, P.L.

18 Nov 1965

Robinson, D.J.S.

20 Jun 1963

Pym, J.S.

18 Nov 1965

McCrudden, M.

20 Jun 1963

Rogosinski, H.P.

16 Dec 1965

Evans, W.D.

17

LMS Items

LMS NEWSLETTER

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

LMS 150TH ANNIVERSARY

DEPARTMENTAL CELEBRATIONS
These events were part of a series of receptions hosted across the UK by mathematics departments, celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the LMS.

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
We celebrated the 150th Anniversary of the LMS on 15 October 2015, as part of the Annual
Institute Celebration. This started with a short LMS presentation (advertising for early career
membership). Professor Andrew Wiles gave a talk, titled The story of equations. This wasfollowed by the prize presentation for 2015 exams and departmental awards. The event
concluded with a drinks reception. There were around 200 undergraduates, some parents,and many members of the department taking part.

18

UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM
To celebrate 150 years of the LMS the School of Mathematical Sciences hosted a colloquium
on 4 November 2015. Professor Anne Taormina (Durham) gave a fascinating and wide ranging
talk, New Moonshines, covering aspects of theoretical physics, number theory and finite
simple groups. This was followed by a cheese and wine reception at which a hearty toast was
raised to the continued health of mathematics and the LMS.

newsletter@lms.ac.uk

No. 454 January 2016

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDONThe event took place on 12 November 2015 as a joint Women in Mathematical Sciences, Statistical Science Seminar and the 150th LMS Anniversary Celebration event. The main guest andspeaker at the triple event was Alison Etheridge, Professor of Probability at Magdalen College,
University of Oxford.
The event began with the Women in Math part of the activities, aimed at female 3rd and 4thyear undergraduates, postgraduate students and research staff from the UCL Departments of  Mathematics and Statistical Science and the Centre for Mathematics, Physics and Engineeringin the Life Sciences and Experimental Biology (CoMPLEX). The main objective of the Womenin Math Series is to encourage female researchers from these departments to meet and discussover lunch in an informal environment. The Women in Math lunch was followed by the Statistical Science Seminar talk of our invited guest Professor Alison Etheridge. The talk was entitled
The pain in the torus: modelling evolution in a spatial continuum. A wine reception for all themembers of the Department of Statistical Science followed after the talk.
The official links to the events on the departmental website are www.ucl.ac.uk/statistics/
research/seminars and www.ucl.ac.uk/statistics/research/women-science.

19

ICME-13 BURSARIES
Thanks to the generosity of the London Mathematical Society (LMS) and the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), the ICME-13 Bursaries Committee is able to offer competitive bursaries of up to £600 for outstanding mathematics educators, attending and presenting
at ICME-13. Applications are encouraged from the full range of those working in all areas ofmathematics and mathematics education in the UK, including teachers, researchers and postgraduate students who can demonstrate a benefit from attending.
The conditions for making a bursary award are
1. That the candidate will benefit academically and professionally from attending ICME-13
and needs bursary funds to attend ICME   
2. That the candidate will contribute to UK presence at ICME-13 by attending andpresenting   3. That the candidate will feed back into policy, practice or research in mathematics educationin the UK   
Full details and application forms are at www.jmc.org.uk/.  Applications should be made on theapplication form and returned to Professor Chris Budd (mascjb@bath.ac.uk) by 31 January 2016
together with a supporting statement from a referee.

LMS NEWSLETTER

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

LMS-CMI RESEARCH SCHOOLSCALL FOR PROPOSALSThe London Mathematical Society and Clay Mathematics Institute invite proposals
for Research Schools to be held in the UK in 2017.

20

Up to £31,000 is available per Research School which provides training for young
researchers in a core area of mathematics. The new series of courses builds on
the short courses, previously supported by the Society and EPSRC, and aims at
the highest international standing by allowing for support of both international lecturers and participants.   The Research Schools are also supported by the
Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research.
Prospective organisers should send an outline proposal to Elizabeth Fisher(Research.Schools@lms.ac.uk) by 31 January 2016.
Outline proposals should discuss:• The general mathematical area of the proposed Research School and its
importance.
• The aims of the Research School, its appropriateness to the Research School
programme and the likely level of demand for the Research School.
• The names and affiliations of the lecturers, titles of their courses and brief
syllabuses.
• The provision for tutorial support.
Outline proposals should be no more than two A4 sides in length.
For further details about the Research Schools, please visit the Society’s website:www.lms.ac.uk/events/lms-cmi-research-schools.
A list of previously supported Research Schools and Short Courses can be found at:www.lms.ac.uk/events/past-research-schools-and-short-courses
Before submitting:  Organisers are welcome to discuss informally their ideas with
the Chair of the Research Meetings Committee, Professor Beatrice Pelloni (RMC.
Chair@lms.ac.uk).

newsletter@lms.ac.uk

No. 454 January 2016

Society Meeting at the BMC 2016
University of Bristol, 21-24 March
5:15pm Society Meeting (21 March)
Public Lecture: Kirsten Lauter (Microsoft Research)
This Society Meeting is part of the British Mathematical Colloquium 2016. The full conference
will also include a special lecture by Hendrik Lenstra and plenaries given by Robert Adler, Luigi
Ambrosio, Maria Chudnovsky, Alex Lubotzky, Peter Sarnak and Amie Wilkinson.
Workshops (Tue & Wed afternoon)
Algebra (organisers: Tim Burness, Jeremy Rickard)
Analysis (organisers: Michiel van den Berg, John Mackay)
Combinatorics (organisers: Thomas Bloom, Julia Wolf)
Ergodic Theory (organisers: Thomas Jordan, Corinna Ulcigrai)
Number Theory (organisers: Andrew Booker, Tim Browning)
Probability (organisers: Márton Balázs, Bálint Tóth)
Speed talks (Wed 5-6pm) & posters
In the spirit of Radio 4's 'Just A Minute', there will be a session of 5-minute talks, allowing early
career researchers, including PhD students, to showcase some of their mathematics. If you would
like to give a speed talk, please apply at http://ow.ly/VmRkO. If you would like to present a poster
at the BMC, please apply at http://ow.ly/VmRsD.
Satellite meetings (Thu afternoon), Research Groups supported by LMS Scheme 3
grantsErgodic theory, organisers Thomas Jordan, Corinna Ulcigrai
COW Algebraic Geometry, organiser Hamid Ahmadinezhad
BLOC Representation Theory, organisers Neil Saunders, Jason Semeraro, Nicole SnashallFor further details and registration, please visit http://www.maths.bris.ac.uk/~matyd/BMC/ Early
bird registration is now open and closes on 1 February 2016. The cost of registration will be £75
and £40 for students. The venue and time of the dinner is to be confirmed.
Accommodation in Bristol is also available, but it is advised you book early to avoid
disappointment. A list of hotels can be found here: http://ow.ly/VmRA3

1865 - 2015

21

News

LMS NEWSLETTER

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

THE LOST LIBRARY OF JOHN DEE

22John Dee (1527-1609) was
one of Tudor England's
most enigmatic figures. A
man for whom the word
‘polymath’ seems coined, hecounted theology, alchemy,
history and mathematics
amongst his passions. The
Royal College of Physicians, London holds thelargest known collection ofsurviving books from Dee’s
library and more than 40 ofthese volumes are on show
in a fascinating new exhibition.
One of the most revealing
texts displayed is Andreas
Alexander’s Mathemologium (1504). Dee’s
marginal annotations clearly show his
interest in the basic tenets of mathematics
and mathematical proof, particularly the Aristotelian principles of demonstration. Other
notes reflect his concerns with the applications of mathematics including astrology,
prognostication and perspective.
It is, however, on the final page that themost telling inscription comes. Dee writes
that he read the book at the house of his‘singular friend’ Edmund Bonner, Bishop

Ptolemy's Quadriparti, 1519

Euclid's Elements of Geometry, 1570

of London, in September 1555.   Dee wasactually under house arrest in Bonner’spalace at Fulham, having been detained on
Mary I’s orders on charges of 'conjuring':
casting horoscopes of the royal family andusing magic to undermine the queen. Dee
escaped serious punishment, but the episodeillustrates the suspicion with which mathematical expertise could be regarded in 17th
century England.
Possibly Dee's most significant publication
was his mathematical preface to the first
English edition of Euclid's‘Elements of Geometry’. Dee
wrote the preface in great
haste in 1570. Earlier in his
career he lectured on Euclid
in Paris, and the preface delineates his conception of
the whole structure of mathematics. Dee begins withthe subjects of the medieval curriculum: arithmetic,
geometry, astronomy andmusic. These are followed
by 17 practical disciplines
including Hydragogie, which‘demonstrateth the possible
leading of Water, by Natures

newsletter@lms.ac.uk

No. 454 January 2016

Elsewhere in the exhibition works illustrate
Dee’s interests in applied mathematics inthe forms of cryptography, astronomy andnavigation. These books and the annotations
within them provide a rare insight into themind of an extraordinary Renaissance scholar.
Katie Birkwood
Rare books and special collections  
librarian and exhibition curator

EXHIBITION INFORMATION
Scholar, courtier, magician: the lost library ofJohn Dee

Arnaldus de Villanova – Opera 1527

lawe’ and thaumaturgic, ‘that Art Mathematicall, which giueth certaine order tomake straunge workes, of the sense to beperceiued, and of men greatly to be wondredat’.

18 January – 29 July 2016
The Royal College of Physicians, London
Usual opening times: Monday–Friday,
9 am – 5 pm.
Opening times may vary: please check online
before you visit.
Details of evening events, weekend tours
and more online.
www.rcplondon.ac.uk/johndee@RCPmuseum #JohnDee

MATHEMATICS POLICY ROUND-UP
December 2015
RESEARCH
Nurse Review of the Research Councils
The recommendations from this independent
review include a new body – Research UK –which will work across the seven ResearchCouncils. This will take the lead in shaping
and driving a strategic approach to science
funding, ensuring a focus on the big challenges and opportunities for UK research. There
was also a recommendation to integrate
Innovate UK into Research UK to strengthen
collaboration between the research base andthe commercialisation of discoveries in thebusiness community. Innovate UK will retain
its clear business focus and separate funding
stream. The final report is available at http://tinyurl.com/nu244n3.

EPSRC REF analysis report
The Engineering and Physical Science
Research Council (EPSRC) has reported thatthe 2014 Research Excellence Framework
revealed ‘comprehensive evidence of thesustained economic and social impact of
EPSRC's investments in engineering andphysical sciences (EPS) research’. The EPSRC
has published a report and companion
leaflet presenting the findings of ananalysis of the REF EPS impact case studies,
carried out by EPSRC.  More information isavailable at http://tinyurl.com/pezcoy7.

HIGHER EDUCATION
Higher Education Green Paper
The government published its green paper
titled Fulfilling our Potential: Teaching

23

News

LMS NEWSLETTER
Excellence, Social Mobility and Student
Choice on 6 November 2015.   The green
paper highlighted proposals to put
students at the heart of higher education.  
‘The reforms are designed to boost teaching
standards, support more people into university from disadvantaged backgrounds,
and ensure better value for money andemployment prospects for students’.  Moreinformation is available at http://tinyurl.
com/pbnntse.

SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES

24

Education Select Committee inquiry
The Education Committee has launched
an inquiry into the purpose and quality ofeducation in England. Written evidence
has been invited addressing the following
points:• what the purpose of education for children of all ages in England should be;• what measures should be used to evaluate the quality of education against thispurpose; and• how well the current education system
performs against these measures.
More information is available at http://tinyurl.com/qzfr3cx.
Ofqual consultation
The LMS has responded to the Ofqual consultation on Developing New GCSEs, AS
and A-levels for First Teaching in 2017.
The Society’s response relates to Statistics(at GCSE and at AS and A-level).   The consultation response is available on the LMS
website at http://tinyurl.com/oh6g6wx.

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk
understanding of what constitutes highquality mathematics-specific ITE. A review
of international jurisdictions showed anemphasis on mathematics-specific training
andmathematics-specificmentoring,strong linkages between professional development and ITE and an investment incritical evaluation skills during and after
ITE’.   More information is available at
http://tinyurl.com/ndzcyw2.

OTHER
Science budget inquiry
The Science and Technology Committee
undertook an inquiry into the sciencebudget, ahead of the Spending Review. The
first report was published on 9 November
2015.   More information is available at
http://tinyurl.com/otm49q7.
Spending Review
The government published a joint Spending
Review and Autumn Statement on the 25
November 2015. The main points are:• protecting the £4.7 billion science
resource funding in real terms for the
rest of the Parliament.  This includes anew £1.5 billion Global Challenges fundto ensure UK science takes the lead in
addressing the problems faced by developing countries while developing ourability to deliver cutting-edge research;and• delivering on the long term science capital commitment of £6.9 billion between
2015-2021 to support the UK’s worldclass research base. This includes up to£150 million (total capital and resource)
to launch a competition for a Dementia
Institute, to build on the UK’s strengths
in medical research’.

Report on initial teacher training (ITE)ACME has published its latest report,
Beginning teaching: best in class? It
looks at what high-quality initial teacher
education (ITE) for teachers of mathemat- Other points of interest:
ics should look like.
'The Spending Review and Autumn
Among other things the report highlights
Statement provides investment of overthat ‘To get and keep high-quality teachers £1.3 billion up to 2019-20 to attract newof mathematics it is imperative that allteachers into the profession, particularly
those involved in ITE and those support- into Science, Technology, Engineering anding newly qualified teachers have a shared
Mathematics (STEM) subjects and to delivernewsletter@lms.ac.uk

the English Baccalaureate (EBacc), to raise
educational standards for young people.''Financial support for higher education
will be increased substantially to enablepeople to study for a degree. The government will lift the age cap on new loans topostgraduates from 2016-17 so they areavailable to all those under 60. Following
a sharp decline in part-time students
since 2008, the government will introduce
new part-time maintenance loans from2018-19 to support the cost of living while
studying. The government expects 150,000
part-time students could benefit each yearby the end of the Parliament. For all STEM
subjects, tuition loans will be extended to
students wishing to do a second degreefrom 2017-18’.
'The government will run a £20 million
competition to set up a new Institute of
Coding that will train the next generation in higher level digital skills. Support
will be provided to secure launch funding
to create a new university in Hereford
focused on engineering in 2016 (subject torelevant approvals)'.
The government will also take forward
a review of the Research Excellence
Framework in order to examine how tosimplify and strengthen funding on thebasis of excellence, and will set out further
details shortly.
The Spending Review and Autumn
Statement extends the freedoms granted
to Research Institutes at Budget 2015 to all

No. 454 January 2016

Department for Business, Innovation and
Skills (BIS) Sector Research Establishments
which are not public corporations, and will
also grant access to accumulated reservesof commercial income, subject to a cap’.
The BIS budget will fall by a total 17%.  
More information is available at http://tinyurl.com/pawf2vz.
The Mathematical Sciences People Pipeline
report
The Mathematical Sciences pervade ourlives, and the complexities of the changing
world could not be managed without them.
In the Mathematical Sciences more thananywhere, and at all levels, the strength of
the infrastructure is embodied in people.
The importance to the UK of having a good
supply of well qualified people cannot be
overstated, but reliable quantitative information has been hard to find. Accordingly,
the Council for the Mathematical Sciences(CMS) commissioned TBR to examine thehigher education and career routes ofstudents taking Mathematical Sciences
courses to provide an understanding of
the critical processes of the Mathematical Sciences career pipeline. This reportpaints a quantitative picture of the flowof people through higher education andinto the workforce.  The report is available
on the CMS website at http://tinyurl.com/
ojqy6j6.
Dr John Johnston
Joint Promotion of Mathematics

EUROPEAN NEWSThe following items are from the European
Mathematical Society webpage www.euromath-soc.eu/recent-news.
LERU statement on Open Access
The League of European Research Universities (LERU) calls upon the European Commission (EC) and the forthcoming Dutch
EU Presidency to work with all stakeholders and bodies involved to bring sensible

solutions to the transition to Open Access:  
business models must support the transition for the benefit of research, not of
publishers. It should be one of the principal
objectives of Commissioner Carlos Moedas
and the Dutch EU Presidency (January-June2016) to ensure that this transition happens.
Greater clarity for all stakeholders is neededboth in the dissemination and archiving of
the scholarly record. The statement issued

25

News

LMS NEWSLETTER
by LERU discusses current practices concerning both Gold and Green Open Accessmodels and urges for more consistency andtransparency. LERU calls upon all universities, research institutes, research funders
and researchers to sign the statement andgive a clear signal to the European Commission and the Dutch EU Presidency (seehttp://tinyurl.com/nju8ekn).

26

Oberwolfach and IMAGINARY
Snapshots of modern mathematics from
Oberwolfach
explainmathematicalproblems and ideas in an accessible andunderstandable way. They provide exciting
insights into current topics of the mathematical community for everyone who isinterested in modern mathematics.   Thesnapshots are written by participants ofeach scientific program at Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach, who
volunteer to explain an important aspect of
their research.  The project is part of Oberwolfach meets IMAGINARY funded by the
Klaus Tschira Foundation.   For further information see www.mfo.de/math-in-public/
snapshots.

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk
tists who have performed top level original
work in the area of understanding physics
through symmetries. The Prize, which isawarded every two years by the Standing
Committee of the International Colloquium
on Group Theoretical Methods in Physics(ICGTMP), consists of a certificate citing
the accomplishments of the recipient, prize
money, and an allowance towards attendance at Group31, ICGTMP in Rio de Janeiro
from 20 to 24 June 2016, where the Prize
will be awarded.
Deadline for nominations: 15 January
2016.   For further information see http://
icgtmp.blogs.uva.es/standing-committee/.
Chevalley Prize
Geordie Williamson of the Max Planck
Institute for Mathematics (Bonn) andthe University of Sydney will receive theinaugural American Mathematical Society
Claude Chevalley Prize in Lie Theory. Williamson is honoured ‘for his work on the
representation theory of Lie algebras andalgebraic groups [which includes] proofs
and reproofs of some longstanding conjectures as well as spectacular counterexamples to the expected bounds in others’. The
prize will be presented on 7 January 2016
in Seattle (see www.ams.org/news?news_
id=2867).

Cédric Villani member of SAM High Level
Group
Cédric Villani, Fields medal 2010 and
director of the Institut Henri Poincaré, hasbeen named member of the High Level
Breakthrough Prize 2016 to Ian AgolGroup of The European Commission's
Ian Agol (UC Berkeley and IAS) is the winner
new Scientific Advice Mechanism (SAM). of the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in MatheAccording to Carlos Moedas, Commissioner matics (three million USD!) for ‘spectacularfor Research, Science and Innovation, the contributions to low dimensional topology
seven appointed exceptional scientists ‘will and geometric group theory, including work
take the use of independent science advice on the solutions of the tameness, virtuallyin Commission policy-making to a new
Haken and virtual fibering conjectures’.
level. The EC will rely on their independent
Two New Horizons in Mathematics prizes
advice on a range of complex policy issues - recognizing the achievements of young sciwhere high-level scientific input is needed’.   entists, at US$100,000 each - were awarded
For further information see http://tinyurl. to Larry Guth (MIT) and André Arroja Nevescom/oqnorsy.
(Imperial College London).   For further information see https://breakthroughprize.
Hermann Weyl Prize 2016
org/News/29.
The purpose of the Hermann Weyl PrizeDavid Chillingworth
is to provide recognition for young scienLMS/EMS Correspondentnewsletter@lms.ac.uk

No. 454 January 2016

LMS INVITED LECTURE
SERIES 2017
Call for Proposals
Proposals for the Invited Lecture Series 2017 are now being sought.  Proposers are invited tosuggest a topic and Lecturer for the lecture series, which they should be prepared to organiseat their own institution or a suitable conference centre within the UK.  
The annual Invited Lecturers scheme aims to bring a distinguished overseas mathematician
to the United Kingdom to present a small course of about ten lectures held over five days
(Monday-Friday). Each course of Invited Lectures is on a major field of current mathematicalresearch, and is instructional in nature, being directed both at graduate students beginningresearch and at established mathematicians who wish to learn about a field outside their own
research specialism.
The format of an annual Invited Lectures series should:• include meetings at which a single speaker gives a course of about ten expository lectures,
examining some subject in depth;• be held over a five day period (Monday to Friday) during a University vacation;• be residential and open to all interested.
A grant of up to £4,000 is available to the host department to support attendance at thelectures.   In addition to full expenses, the lecturer is offered an honorarium of £1,250 for
giving the course.   It is intended that the texts of the lectures given in the series shall be
published and an honorarium of £1,500 is also available upon receipt of lecture notes in a
publishable form.
Enquiries about the Invited Lectures should be directed to the Programme Secretary at theSociety (lmsmeetings@lms.ac.uk). The deadline for the submission of proposals is 5 February
2016.
For more information about the scheme and how to submit a proposal, please visit: www.lms.
ac.uk/events/lectures/invited-lecturer-proposals
The Invited Lecturer for 2016 is Professor Edgar Knobloch (UC Berkeley), who will visit Loughborough from 21-25 March 2016 to give a series of lectures on Dynamics, Patterns and Spatially
Localised Structures (see opposite page).
Recent previous lecturers have been:
2015
2014

2013
2012
2011
2010

M. Shapiro (Michigan State University)
Cluster algebras and integrable systems
J. Väänänen (University of Helsinki and University of Amsterdam)
Games, trees and models, foundations of mathematics and second order logic and
The mathematical theory of dependence and independence
F. Bogomolov (NYU)
Birational geometry and Galois groups
A. Borodin (MIT)Determinantal point processes and representation theory
E. Candes (Stanford)
Compressed sensing
M. Bramson (University of Minnesota)
Stability of queuing networks

27

Records of Proceedings

LMS NEWSLETTER

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

RECORDS OF PROCEEDINGS AT LMS MEETINGSANNUAL GENERAL MEETING AND SOCIETY MEETING
OF THE LONDON MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY

28

held on Friday 13 November 2015 at the British Medical Association House, London.   About 150
members and visitors were present for all or part of the meeting.
The meeting began at 3:00 pm, with the President, Professor Terry Lyons, FRS, in the Chair. Members
who had not yet voted were invited to hand their ballot papers to the Scrutineers, Professors Chris
Lance and Rodney Sharp.
The Vice-President, Professor Ken Brown, presented a report on the Society’s activities and thePresident invited questions.
The Vice-President, Professor John Greenlees, presented his report on the Society’s finances during the
2014/15 financial year and the President invited questions.
Copies of the Trustees Report for 2014/15 were made available and the President invited members
to adopt the Trustees for 2014/15 by a show of hands. The Trustees Report for 2014/15 was adopted.
The President proposed Messrs Kingston Smith be re-appointed as auditors for 2015/16 and invitedmembers to approve the re-appointment by a show of hands.  Messrs Kingston Smith were re-appointed as auditors for 2015/16.
The President, on Council’s behalf, proposed that John H. Conway, of Princeton University, be electedto Honorary Membership of the Society in its 150th Anniversary year.  This was approved by acclaim.  
The President read a short version of the citation, to be published in full in the Bulletin.
Fifty-eight people were elected to Ordinary Membership: Dominic Aku, Ahmad Alkenani, Mojtaba
Ammari-Allahyari, D.M Basavarajaiah, Michael Blaylock, Robert Blincoe, Elena Boguslavskaya, David
Bourne, Christopher Braun, Oleg Chalykh, Nira Chamberlain, Suhyoung Choi, Mark Costine, Stephen
Coulson, Hannah Davies, Alfredo Deano, Sam Dolan, Jessica Enright, Alex Fink, Dmitri Finkelshtein,
Jan Foniok, Nic Freeman, Andras Hrasko, Tyler Kelly, Eun-Jin Kim, Meena Kotecha, Anish Kumar, Irene
Kyza, Kurt Langfeld, Marie-Amelie Lawn, Han Lee, Thomas Lidbetter, Yu Lu, Madhusudan Manjunath,
Sandro Mattarei, Sarbari Mukherjee, Bertie Muller, Johan Martens, Loc Nguyen, Michael Nieves, Semiu
Oladipupo Oladejo, Joana Oliveira Dos Santos Amorim, Olivier Menoukeu Pamen, Dmitrii Pasechnik,David Percy, Mariya Ptashnyk, Susanne Pumpluen, Mihai Putinar, Igor Rivin, Alex Roberts, Amir Saei,
Sarabjit Sandhu, Travis Schedler, Bernd Schomburg, Memhet Haluk Sengun, Mahmood Shihab, Shafali
Shown-Keen, Lawrence Smallman, Lutz Warnke.
Forty-three people were elected to Associate Membership: Ammad Ahmed, Sanna Ansari, Maryam
Argungu, Marcel Armour, Aras Asaad, Joe Bailey, Francesca Bianchi, Martina Bohunicka, Arup Borah,
Gareth Case, Dimitrios Chatzakos, Ged Corob Cook, Rebecca Cotton-Barratt, Aled Crow, Francisco deMelo Virissimo, Phil Emmott, Noel Ferrand, Carlos Fresneda-Portillo, Ming Gao, Alexander Graham,
Scott Harper, James Jackaman, Fabian Jacobs, Nicholas Jamieson, Dilip Kumar, Sreekumar Kumar,
Jogendra Kumar, Robert Kurinczuk, Yupeng Liu, Joseph Mahele, Emiko Okoturo, Vera Otiende,
Rebecca Parkin, Caroline Peters, Ruth Reynolds, Sara Scaramuccia, Anton Solomko, Kathryn Spalding,Julia Stenberg, Stelio Anthony Stylli, John Sylvester, Thomas Windisch. Hector Zenil.
Five people were elected to Reciprocity Membership: Igor Freire, Oghenetega Stephen Irererhievwie,
Santiago More, Idowu Osinuga, Robert van den Berg.
Sixty people were elected to Associate Membership for Teacher Training Scholars: Shamim Akhtar,
Oona Berry, Katharine Broad, Grace Charalambous, Emma Clark, Andrew Coffey, Victoria Coome,
Natalie Cummins, Ilaria D'Adamo, Paul Dean, Michael Dennett, Michael Dick, Adam Dubale, Ross Friel,
Andrew Frost, Luke Garner, Jack Gavin, Emily Grayson, Aidan Gollaglee, Amelia Guinee, Ahmed Gul,
Wakas Hanif, Emily Hewson, Taslima Hussain, Gautam Jain, Adam Jasko, Adam Jennings, Abeer Jeylani,
Elizabeth King, Samuel Lewis, Kevin Leahy, Mike Lewry, Joseph Lucas, Siddharth Madhusudan, Sana
Malik, Chloe Mason, Laura McGuinness, Alexander Milne, Lisa Mott, Miharu Obata, Styliani Papadatou,
Anushka Puri, Amanda Ridout, Jordan Roberts, Sarah Roche, Samuel Rooyen, Katie Rowlands, Miles
Saunders-Priem, Jennifer Shackley, Sukhjeet Singh, Jessica Smith, Rebecca Smith, Lisa Smith, Gavinnewsletter@lms.ac.uk

No. 454 January 2016

Stewart, Julia Sturgess, Sarah Timlin, Katherine Watson, Heidi Wright, Samuel Wright, Pamela Yeh.
Three members signed the book and were admitted to the Society.
The President, on Council’s behalf, presented certificates to the 2015 Society Prize-winners:
Polya Prize: Professor Boris Zilber
Shepherd Prize: Professor Keith Ball, FRS
Senior Whitehead Prize: Professor Robert Mackay, FRS
Naylor Prize: Professor Steven Jonathan Chapman
Whitehead Prizes: Dr James Maynard, Professor Christoph Ortner, Professor Mason Porter, Professor
Dominic Vella, Dr David Loeffler and Dr Sarah Zerbes
Anne Bennett Prize: Dr Apala Majumdar
The winners of the Berwick Prize, Pierre-Emmanuel Caprace and Nicolas Monod, and the winner of thesixth Whitehead Prize, Professor Peter Keevash, were unable to attend to collect their prizes.
The President, on Council’s behalf, presented certificates to the following winners of a special prize,
established for the 150th Anniversary:
Hirst Prize and Lectureship: Dr John O’Connor and Professor Edmund Robertson
Professor Christopher Budd, winner of the Communication Prize, also established for the 150th Anniversary year, was unable to attend to collect his prize.
The President announced that the next meeting of the Society would be at QMUL on 28-29 November
2015 as part of the Joint Meeting with the Institute of Physics and the Royal Astronomical Society tocelebrate the centenary of the presentation of the Theory of General Relativity by Albert Einstein to
the Prussian Academy of Sciences.  The following meeting would be at the ICMS in Edinburgh as partof the Joint Meeting with the Edinburgh Mathematical Society with a Workshop on Big Data.
Professor Bill Cook, University of Waterloo, gave a lecture on In pursuit of the travelling salesman:mathematics at the limits of computation.
After tea, Professor Sharp announced the results of the ballot.  The following Officers and Membersof the Council were elected.
President: Simon TavaréVice-Presidents: Ken Brown, John Greenlees
Treasurer: Robert Curtis
General Secretary: Stephen Huggett
Publications Secretary: John Hunton
Programme Secretary: Iain A. Stewart
Education Secretary: Alice Rogers
Members-at-Large of Council (for 2 year terms): Tony Gardiner, Sam Howison, Diane Maclagan,
Gwyneth Stallard, Alina Vdovina
Members-at-Large of Council (for 1 year terms): Francis W. Clarke, David M. Evans
Member-at-Large (Librarian): June Barrow-Green
Four Members-at-Large who were elected for two years in 2014 have a year left to serve: Alexandre
Borovik, Tara Brendle, Cathy Hobbs and Beatrice Pelloni.
The following were elected to the Nominating Committee: Ursula Martin and Sarah Rees. The continuing members of the Nominating Committee are: John Toland (Chair), Martin Bridson, Stephen Donkin,Paul Glendinning and Alex Wilkie.
Professor Terry Lyons handed over the Presidential badge of office to Professor Simon Tavaré.  The new
President thanked members for the honour and privilege of being elected as President and promised
to fulfill the Charter, Statutes and By-laws of the Society.
The newly-elected President, Professor Simon Tavaré, FRS, took the Chair.
Professor Terry Lyons, FRS gave the Presidential Address on Enveloping algebras, signatures andChinese handwriting.
After the meeting, a reception was held at De Morgan House, followed by the Annual Dinner, which
was held at the Montague Hotel and attended by 100 people.

29

LMS NEWSLETTER

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

We can solve your problems
with our MSc in Financial
Mathematics

30

Our course allows you to master the numericaland computational skills required for thepractical implementation of financial models sothat you can progress your career at a higher
level. Graduates from our MSc have gone into a
range of careers becoming financial consultants
or traders within banks, stock exchanges orinsurance companies, to name a few.
Come and join us at our Postgraduate OpenEvening on Wednesday 20 January 2016, from
4pm – 7pm where you will have an opportunity
to see our Postgraduate facilities, meetacademic staff and talk to current students on
the Financial Mathematics MSc.
Book your place at our Postgraduate OpenEvening: www.brunel.ac.uk/pgopenday
Find out more about the course at:www.brunel.ac.uk/msc-fm

001410E Maths advert 123x174mm v4.indd 1

18/12/2015 08:58

newsletter@lms.ac.uk

No. 454 January 2016

Modern topics in Nonlinear PDE
and Geometric Analysis
LMS-CMI Research School, Reading, 4-8 July 2016
Organisers: Stefanos Aretakis (Princeton, USA) and Nikos Katzourakis (Reading, UK).
For further information please visit: http://ow.ly/VA0cK. The three main lecture (6+2)hour courses will be:
•
•

•

•

Course 1: Nonlinear PDE and Calculus of Variations
Lawrence C. Evans (Berkeley, USA) - Nonlinear PDE and optimisation
Jan Kristensen (Oxford, UK) - Convexity notions in the Calculus of Variations
Course 2: Geometric Hyperbolic PDE, General Relativity & Fluid Dynamics
Mihalis Dafermos (Princeton, USA - Cambridge, UK) - The stability problem forblack holes
Gustav Holzegel (Imperial College, UK) - The formation of shocks in three
dimensional ﬂuid dynamics
Course 3: Geometric Nonlinear PDE
Bernard Dacorogna (EPFL, Switzerland) - The pull-back equation for differential
forms
Spyros Alexakis (Toronto, Canada) - On dynamical stability of singular Ricci
solitons under Ricci ﬂow
The distinguished guest lecturers are Robert Jensen (Chicago, USA) and
Juan Manfredi (Pittsburgh, USA)

Applications should be made by 11 April using the form at http://ow.ly/VA0i0. Research students, postdocs and those working in industry are invited to apply. Numbers will be limited and those interested areadvised to make an early application. *All applicants will be contacted within two weeks after the deadline.
All research students will be charged a registration fee of £150 and all early career researchers will becharged a registration fee of £250. There will be no charge for subsistence costs fro these groups. Allother participants (e.g. those working in industry) will be charged a registration fee of £250 plus the full
subsistence costs.
All UK-based participants must pay their own travel costs. For overseas participants, support will beavailable to contribute towards travel costs. Fees are not payable until a place on the course is offered but
will be due by Friday 27 May 2016.

1865 - 201531

ReportsLMS NEWSLETTER

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

LMS ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
Report32

The 2015 LMS Annual General
Meeting was held at the BMA
House in Tavistock Square,
London on Friday 13 November
2015.
The
meeting
was
preceded in the morning andearly afternoon by the 2015
LMS Graduate Student Meeting.
The AGM was held in The
Great Hall of the BMA House.
Following the welcome, VicePresident Professor Ken Brown
gave a report on the Society’s
activities over the last year
and highlighted the notable
Certificates presented to John O’Connor and Professor Edmund Robertson
awarded for the Hirst Prize and Lectureshipchanges since the previous year.
Vice-President John Greenlees
then presented the report of the Society’s AGM was by Professor Bill Cook of the UniTreasurer, Professor Robert Curtis, on theversity of Waterloo. The talk was titled In
past year and invited questions.
pursuit of the traveling salesman: mathThis was followed by the resolutions in ematics at the limits of computation.
which the President of the Society, Professor Professor Cook presented an overview ofTerry Lyons, invited questions and rec- the traveling salesman problem and howommended the adoption of the Trustees' the problem has impacted the mathematireport. This was in turn followed by the cal development of algorithms during theofficial appointment of the Auditors, andlast century. He presented current research
the election of the new Honorary Members
into the problem from a theoretical as wellof the Society. Professor Terry Lyons then as applied perspective, and emphasised its
presented the certificates to the 2015 LMS
link with the famous P versus NP problem.
Prize Winners, honouring the contribution
The talk of Professor Bill Cook wasmade by these mathematicians.
followed by a break with tea and coffee
The first of two talks presented at thewhich gave an opportunity for everyone

Vice President Ken Brown

William Cook Lecturenewsletter@lms.ac.uk

No. 454 January 201633
LMS prize winners

to meet other attendees of the AGM andmembers of the Society.   Shortly after the
break, Professor Terry Lyons declared theofficial results of the election and welcomed
the new President of the LMS, Professor
Simon Tavaré.
The second talk of the AGM was given

LMS President and immediate Past President

by Professor Terry Lyons in his presidential
address titled Enveloping algebras, signatures and Chinese handwriting. Professor
Lyons presented a mathematical object
called the path signature and emphasised
its role in classical and stochastic analysis.
He gave an overview of the current research
being carried out in this fieldand presented several currently
open problems. Professor Lyons
concluded with an applicationof signatures to a challenging machine learning problem
of recognising Chinese handwritten characters in a mobile
phone application.
After the conclusion of theAGM, the audience was invited
to a reception at De Morgan
House in Russell Square, which
was followed by the Society's
Annual Dinner.
Ilya Chevyrev
University of Oxford

ReportsLMS NEWSLETTER

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

LMS GRADUATE STUDENT MEETING
Report34

The autumn London Mathematical Society
Graduate Student Meeting (GSM) was heldon 13 November 2015 at the statuesque
BMA House in Tavistock Square, London.
The meeting preceded the Annual General
Meeting of the Society which included thefinal address of Terry Lyons' presidency
as well as a lecture by Bill Cook (University of Waterloo) on the travelling salesman
problem.
The GSM was an excellent opportunity forgraduate students from various universities
to become acquainted and exchange ideas ina friendly environment.   It also encouraged
many of us to attend the Annual General
Meeting and to feel part of the Society’s
150th anniversary celebrations.  
After the essentials of coffee and pastries,
we assembled in the Murrell Room to hear
the first speaker of the GSM. Professor Dan
Crisan (Imperial College, London) gave an historical account of the notion of a mathematical integral, finishing with an introduction torough path integration.
François-Xavier Briol (Warwick) began thegraduate student talks where Dan Crisan
left off, with a brief talk on numerical andprobabilistic integration – a fashionable field
in today's world. This was followed by twotalks on the more classical area of hyperbolic geometry by Irene Pasquinelli (Durham)
and Dimitrios Chatzakos (UCL). Sam Fearn(Durham) then gave an exposition of Mathieu
24, a particular sporadic group whose representation theory has surprising links withstring theory! And, Vasiliki Evdoridou (Open
University) spoke about the escaping set of acertain dynamical system which is known as –and is reminiscent of – a spider's web.
After lunch, we were jovially welcomed to
the first and only afternoon session of the
GSM by Dr Horatio Boedihardjo (Reading).
Horatio spoke about the philosophy behindrough path theory and its connections withother areas of science and Mathematics.
He hinted also at various remaining open
problems therein which may be of interest to
graduate students.
Sina Nejad
University of Oxford

Sam Fearn (Durham)

Irene Pasquinelli (Durham)

Dan Crisan (Imperial College, London)

newsletter@lms.ac.uk

No. 454 January 2016

THE SCIENCE OF BEAUTY
Report
The experience of beauty is a topic ofvery great interest to us all. Debates
about its nature have traditionallybeen confined to the humanities
and especially the philosophy of aesthetics. It is only relatively recently
that neurobiology has addressed
the topic of the neural determinantsof aesthetic experience derived fromdifferent sources, from visual art
to mathematics and moral beauty.
While these studies have given© Gerardo Jaconelli, courtesy of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
very interesting results – in particular showing that there are specialSir David Attenboroughized brain pathways for aesthetic
judgment and that the “aesthetic emotion” • Sir Michael Atiyah The Role of Beauty inaroused by different sources correlates with
Mathematics
activity in the same parts of the emotional • Sir David Attenborough Beauty in thebrain – they have also raised fundamental
Animal World
questions that are of interest to science and • Angela Breitenbach Philosophical Apthe humanities alike. One statistic demonproaches to Beauty in Mathematics
strates impressively the huge interest in a • Nicky Clayton and Clive Wilkins
topic that combines different approaches
Conversation without Words
to the study of beauty. The paper of Atiyah • Robbert Dijkgraaf Beauty in Physics andand Zeki on The Experience of Mathematical
Mathematics
Beauty and its Neural Correlates published in • Cinzia Di Dio The Neurobiology of Beauty,
February 2014 has so far been viewed aroundas Related to Proportion
110,000 times, a record in neuroscience and • Beatrice de Gelder The Perception ofprobably in mathematics as well.
Human Beauty
The LMS was one of the sponsors
of a two-day multidisciplinary conference on The Science of Beauty addressing these issues, which was heldat the Royal Society of Edinburgh
from 10 to 11 November 2015, andchaired by the RSE President Dame
Jocelyn Bell Burnell. The scientificorganizers were Sir Michael Atiyah(Trinity College, Cambridge and the
University of Edinburgh) and theneuroscientist Semir Zeki (University College, London), who gathereda distinguished galaxy of speakers© Gerardo Jaconelli, courtesy of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
from the worlds of mathematics,
neuroscience, philosophy, aesthetics,
Sir Michael Atiyah, Sir David Attenborough,biology and physics:
Sir Roger Penrose

35

Reports, Awards

LMS NEWSLETTER© Gerardo Jaconelli, courtesy of theRoyal Society of Edinburgh
Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Sir Michael Atiyah

36• Gordon Graham Beauty and Excellence in
Scottish Philosophical Aesthetics• Tomohiro Ishizu The Neurobiology of Aesthetic Judgements• Winfried Menninghaus Literature andEmpirical Aesthetics• Sir Roger Penrose The Role of Art in
Mathematics• Michael Trimble The Beauty of Tears andTears of Beauty: Neurobiology of Sorrow• Semir Zeki Neural Correlates of the Experience of Beauty, Including Mathematical
Beautyhttp://newsletter.lms.ac.uk
The conference concluded with a concert at
the church of St Andrew and St George Going
to Ground: Musical Magic from Pervasive
Patterns by Oscar Garcia-Prada countertenor
and Din Ghani lutes.
Unfortunately, David Mumford could notattend in person, but the text of his planned
lecture on Math & Beauty & Brain Areas was
distributed at the conference.
The meeting was a great success, with manythought-provoking contributions from participants with widely differing intellectual
backgrounds. The attendance was in excess
of 100, including many students. The presentation by David Attenborough was a particular highlight: as he pointed out Alfred
Russel Wallace believed that it was absurd to
attribute aesthetic appreciation to birds, while
Charles Darwin thought otherwise. Video
sequences of beautiful animal behaviour
persuaded the audience that Darwin was right.
The RSE website https://www.royalsoced.
org.uk/ contains detailed reports on the talks,
including some videos.
Andrew Ranicki
Edinburgh© Gerardo Jaconelli, courtesy of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
Group photo in the Scott Room of the Royal Society of Edinburgh

newsletter@lms.ac.uk

No. 454 January 2016

UNDERGRADUATE ESSAY PRIZE
The British Society for the History ofMathematics is pleased to invite submissions for its 2015-16 undergraduate
essay prize. The essay, which may be on
any topic within the history of mathematics, should be no more than 2,500
words (excluding references). The competition is open to any person who isenrolled as an undergraduate in a UK or Irish
university during the academic year 2015-16.
The value of the prize will be £100, plus freemembership of the Society for a year.

Details about how to enter can be foundon the Society website (www.bshm.ac.uk/
ug-essay). The deadline for receipt of submissions is Friday 1 July 2016.

RAMANUJAN PRIZE 2016
Call for Nominations
The Ramanujan Prize for young mathematicians from developing countries has
been awarded annually since 2005.   ThePrize is funded by the Department of
Science and Technology of the Government of India (DST).    It is administeredjointly by the Abdus Salam International
Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), theInternational Mathematical Union (IMU)
and the DST.
The Ramanujan Prize is usually awarded
to one person, but may be shared equally

among recipients who have contributed
to the same body of work. The Prize isawarded annually to a researcher froma developing country who is less than 45
years of age on 31 December of the yearof the award, and who has conducted
outstanding research in a developing
country.
Nominations can only be made by using
the online system.  See http://tinyurl.com/
ncg6nun.  The deadline for nominations is
Tuesday 1 March 2016.

ROYAL SOCIETY MEDALS AND AWARDS 2016
The Royal Society is seeking nominations for its 2016 medals and awards. The
medals, awards and prize lectures provide
an opportunity to recognise and celebrate
outstanding scientific achievement. They
range from subject specific medals to
those celebrating the communicationand promotion of science and include theworld’s oldest scientific prize, The Copley
Medal.
The full list of awards is available at
http://tinyurl.com/pebo57f.
The
Royal

Society invites nominations for candidates
across the disciplines and encourages consideration of women, under-represented
minorities and those undertaking researchin industry.
The closing date for nominations is
Monday 1 February 2016. Full details on
how to nominate and further informationon all awards is available at http://tinyurl.
com/q6ogfom.    For further assistanceemail awards@royalsociety.org or call 020
7451 2213.

37

LMS NEWSLETTER

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

LMS PRIZES 2016
Call for Nominations
The London Mathematical Society welcomes nominations for the 2016 prizes, torecognise and celebrate achievements in and contributions to mathematics.
In 2016, the LMS Council expects to award:

De Morgan Medal
The Society’s premier award; the only grounds for the award of the Medal are
the candidate’s contributions to mathematics.

Fröhlich Prize
38

Awarded for original and extremely innovative work in any branch ofmathematics.

Senior Berwick PrizeAwarded in recognition of an outstanding piece of mathematical research
actually published by the Society during the eight years ending on 31 December
2015.

Whitehead Prizes
Awarded for work in and influence on mathematics.

Anne Bennett PrizeAwarded for work in and influence on mathematics, particularly acting as aninspiration for women mathematicians.
For further information and nomination forms, please visit the LMS website(www.lms.ac.uk/content/nominations-lms-prizes) or contact Duncan Turton,
Secretary to the Prizes Committee at the Society (tel: 020 7927 0801, email:prizes@lms.ac.uk).
The Prizes Committee is keen to increase the number of nominations it receives
and, in particular, the number of nominations for women, which are disproportionately low each year. The prize regulations refer to the concept of ‘academic
age’ — rather than date of birth — in order to take account more fully of broken
career patterns.

Closing date for nominations:Monday 25 January 2016

newsletter@lms.ac.uk

No. 454 January 20162016 LOUIS BACHELIER PRIZE –CALL FOR NOMINATIONSThe Louis Bachelier Prize is a biennial prize jointly awarded by the
London Mathematical Society (LMS), the Natixis Foundation for
Quantitative Research and the Société de Mathématiques Appliquées etIndustrielles (SMAI). The Prize will be awarded to a mathematician
who, on the 1st January of the year of its award, has fewer than 20
years (full time equivalent) of involvement in mathematics at
postdoctoral level, allowing for breaks in continuity, or who in theopinion of the Bachelier Prize Committee is at an equivalent stage intheir career.
The Prize will be awarded to the winner for his/her exceptional
contribution to mathematical modelling in finance, insurance, risk
management and/or scientific computing applied to finance andinsurance.
Nominations are now open for the 2016 Louis Bachelier prize. A
form for making nominations is available to download athttps://www.lms.ac.uk/prizes/louisbachelierprize.
The closing date is 31st January 2016.
The prize-winner will have a list of outstanding publications in top
quality academic journals in the areas of quantitative finance, risk
management, or computational methods in finance and be recognisedby his/her peers in academia and the industry for his/her exceptional
contribution to mathematical modelling in finance. Nominees must be
permanent residents in Europe (in the geographical sense).
The prize winner will receive €20,000 including £5,000 to organise ascientific workshop in Europe on their area of research interests.
The Louis Bachelier Prize, initially “Prix NATIXIS–SMAI”, was instituted in 2007 by the
NATIXIS Foundation for Quantitative Research and the Société de Mathématiques Appliquéeset Industrielles.

The London Mathematical Society is a registered charity (Charity Commission number 252660) for thepromotion of mathematical knowledge.

39

LMS NEWSLETTER

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

FROM THE GRAIN TO THE CONTINUUM:
TWO PHASE DYNAMICS OF A PARTIALLY
MOLTEN, POLYCRYSTALLINE AGGREGATE
11-15 April 2016in association with the Isaac Newton Institute programme
Melt in the Mantle(15 February – 17 June 2016)40

The dynamics of partially molten rocks in Earth's interior are critical to a wide range ofgeodynamic phenomena. The generation and extraction of melt at mid-ocean ridges,
the link between subduction and arc volcanism, the rheological behavior of the deep
interior, the chemical differentiation of Earth, and the ability to image these processes
with geophysical observations all fundamentally rely on the grain-scale physics ofpartially molten systems.
Future breakthroughs on grain-scale processes in the partially molten mantle will
require collaboration and innovation among theoretical, computational, and experimental subdisciplines. Physical models of melt migration, melt-rock reaction, andtextural evolution must all be integrated with models of elastic, plastic, and viscous
deformation in the solid state. These models need to agree with experimental observations while stimulating future experiments to test unconstrained aspects of the models.
Finally, these physical models must be encapsulated so that grain-scale dynamics, at themillimeter scale and below, can be coarsened to geologically relevant scales of kilometers. This final step is particularly challenging given that (1) the grain-scale processes
inherently occur in discontinuous media while the large-scale phenomena are preferably treated as continua, (2) the grain-scale processes may, themselves, depend upon
sub-grain, atomistic, modeling, and (3) the material properties relevant to the upper
mantle exhibit strongly non-linear behavior.
To overcome these major hurdles requires interaction and collaboration among experimentalists, computational geodynamicists, and applied mathematicians. The aim of
this workshop is to bring together leading scientists from solid-earth science, materials
science, and applied mathematics to discuss the current state-of-the-art and future directions in grain-scale physical models for partially molten systems, magma dynamics
in the laboratory, elasticity theory and seismic wave propagation in partially molten
rocks, and upscaling and homogenisation methods for applying grain-scale models togeodynamic processes.
Further information and application forms are available from the website
www.newton.ac.uk/event/mimw02
Closing date of the receipt of applications 1 February 2016.

newsletter@lms.ac.uk

No. 454 January 2016

Laureates of mathematics andcomputer science meetthe next generation

4th Heidelberg Laureate Forum
September 18 - 23, 2016

Apply now!
Submission Deadline: February 3, 2016

• Mathematics and computer science in one symposium• Meet your scientific role models face to face
• Advance your scientific career• Travel grants available• Lodging and board provided“One of the milestones of my academic career.“
Young researcher at HLF 2015

The Heidelberg Laureate Forum connects highly talented
young researchers (undergraduates, PhD candidates, andpostdocs) with the best scientists in their research fields:
mathematics and computer science (Abel, Fields, Turing, andNevanlinna Laureates).

For more information and online application, please visit:www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org

41

Visits, MeetingsLMS NEWSLETTERVISIT OF BIRGIT JACOB

42

Professor Birgit Jacob (University ofWuppertal, Germany) will visit the universities
of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Leeds and Oxford
from 16 to 24 February 2016. Professor Jacob
has made significant contributions in theareas of systems and control theory, including
PDEs and operator semigroups.   During her
visit she will give talks as follows:• University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
Tuesday 16 February at 4.30 pm
Energy-based analytic methods forevolution equations(contact Evgenios Kakariadis: Evgenios.
Kakariadis@newcastle.ac.uk)• University of Leeds, Thursday 18 February
at 4 pm
Hyperbolic partial differential equations
on the semiaxis(contact Jonathan Partington:
J.R. Partington@leeds.ac.uk)• University of Oxford, Tuesday 23 February
at 5 pm
Energy-based analytic methods forevolution equations(contact Charles Batty:
charles.batty@sjc.ox.ac.uk)
For further details contact Jonathan Partington (J.R.Partington@leeds.ac.uk). The
visit is supported by an LMS Scheme 2 grant.

VISIT OF MIKHAIL
MALYUTOV
Professor Mikhail Malyutov (Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA) will visit
the universities of Leicester, Warwick, Nottingham and Manchester from 14 February
to 15 May 2016 His visit will be devoted tothe mathematical problems of time series
analysis.  Professor Malyutov will present theresults of the complexity analysis and statistical methods based on universal codes. He will
describe how universal codes can be used forsolving some of the most important statistical problems for time series.  All problems are
considered within the framework of classicalmathematical statistics while, at the same

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk
time, everyday methods of data compression(or archivers) can be used as a tool for theestimation and testing.
During his visit Professor Malyutov will givethe following presentations:• University of Leicester, 9 March
Compression based authorship attributionof literary works• University of Nottingham, 28 April
Sparsity against exponential complexity in
big data• University of Warwick, 6 May
Context-free and grammar-free statistical
testing identity of styles• University of Manchester, 11 May
SCOT modelling, parallel training andstatistical inference
Professor Malyutov will also deliver a seriesof lectures for MSc and PhD students about
SCOT based Stock market models during
February and March at the University ofLeicester.
For further details contact Alexander
N. Gorban (ag153@le.ac.uk). The visit is
supported by an LMS Scheme 2 grant.

VISIT OF UTKIR ROZIKOVProfessor Utkir Rozikov (Institute of Mathematics, Tashkent, Uzbekistan) will be visiting
the School of Mathematics at the Universityof Leeds from 29 January to 1 March 2016. Heworks in probability, mathematical physics
and analysis, specializing in dynamical systems
and statistical mechanics.   Professor Rozikov
has made significant contributions to theanalysis of Gibbs states on trees, in particular with random interactions, and published
an authoritative research monograph Gibbs
Measures on Cayley Trees (World Scientific,2013). He has promoted new tools to study
Gibbs measures on graphs, such as group representation theory, information flows, nodeweighted random walks, contour methods
on trees, and nonlinear analysis. He has also
advanced the idea of p-adic dynamics applied
to statistical mechanics on Cayley graphsof non-amenable groups. His more recent
research interests are focused on evolution

newsletter@lms.ac.uk

algebras of sex-linked populations, aiming toincorporate thermodynamics in mathematical biology models.
During his visit, Professor Rozikov will givethe following seminars:• Durham University, Department ofMathematical Sciences, Statistics seminar, Monday 1 February, 14:00, room
CM221: p-adic Gibbs measures (www.
dur.ac.uk/mathematical.sciences/events/
seminars/?seminar=4489; contact Ostap
Hrynyv: Ostap.Hryniv@durham.ac.uk)• Warwick University, Department of Mathematics, Statistical Mechanics seminar,
Thursday 4 February, 14.00, room MS.04(Zeeman Building): Gibbs measures of
the Ising model on Cayley trees: Modern

No. 454 January 2016

results and open problems (www.ueltschi.
org/seminars/index.php?date=160101; contact Daniel Ueltschi: D.Ueltschi@warwick.
ac.uk)• University of Leeds, School of Mathematics, Mathematical Biology and Medicine
seminar, Wednesday 10 February,  12.00:
Stochastic dynamical systems in population biology (www1.maths.leeds.ac.uk/
research/mathbiomed/; contact Jeanine
Houwing-Duistermaat: J.Duistermaat@
leeds.ac.uk)
For further details contact Leonid Bogachev(L.V.Bogachev@leeds.ac.uk). The visit is
supported by an LMS Scheme 2 grant anda visiting research grant from the School ofMathematics at Leeds.

SINGULARITIES ANDAPPLICATIONS

students to attend and there will be poster
sessions and the opportunity for short presentations. The registration fee will be about£40, waived for PhD students. Any enquiries
Victor Goryunov 60
should be directed to Peter Giblin (pjgiblin@
A workshop in celebration of the 60th
liv.ac.uk).
birthday of Victor Goryunov will be held
The workshop is supported by an LMS Conin Liverpool from 30 March to 2 April 2016.   ference grant and by grants from the DeThe meeting will cover several areas of sin- partment of Mathematical Sciences and thegularity theory and applications, including
Faculty of Science and Engineering at thegeometrical problems, singular spaces, dif- University of Liverpool.
ferential equations and algebraic geometry.
Among those who have accepted invitations
to participate are:• Jean-Paul Brasselet (Aix-Marseille)
Robert MacKay 60• Alexey Davidov (Moscow)• Andrew du Plessis (Ǻrhus)
This meeting, in honour of the 60th birth• Eugene Gorsky (UC Davis)
day of Robert MacKay, FRS, will be held at• Ursula Ludwig (Duisberg-Essen)
the University of Warwick from 18 to 20• David Massey (North-Eastern)
May 2016. This meeting is to survey how the• David Mond (Warwick)mathematics of complex systems (including• Mutsuo Oka (Tokyo)
dynamical chaos (dissipative and conserva• Patrick Popescu-Pampu (Lille)tive), spatial-temporal chaos, and networks)• Maria del Carmen Romero-Fuster
is driving research in physics, biology and(Valencia)
economics, and to celebrate the mathemati• Maria Aparecida Soares Ruas (São Paulo)
cal and scientific work and influence of Rob• Inna Scherbak (Tel Aviv)
ert MacKay FRS on the occasion of his 60thForfurther
detailssee
www.liv. birthday.   The meeting will bring together
ac.uk/~pjgiblin/VVG60/VVG60.htm.
Thereleading researchers, establishing the current
is significant funding for UK based PhD state of research at the interface of dynami-

The Dynamics ofComplex Systems

43

Meetings

LMS NEWSLETTER

44

cal systems, complex systems, and real-world
applications. Current research results andfuture directions will be disseminated to awide audience including PhD students andearly-career researchers.   We expect to welcome participants with a broad scientificbackground from the UK, Europe, and internationally, in particular from the complex
systems and nonlinear dynamics communities and from those developing applicationsof mathematics to ecology, epidemiology,
systems biology, statistical physics, mechanics and finance.
Only invited speakers will be allocated atime slot for oral contributions. However, allparticipants are welcome to present a poster.  
Posters will be displayed during the entire
meeting, and a prize will be awarded for thebest poster presented by a PhD student.
This conference is open to anyone interested. There is a registration fee of £80 to coverrefreshments, three lunches (Wednesday,Thursday, Friday), dinner (Wednesday), andthe conference dinner (Thursday).   Tegisterat http://tinyurl.com/plqb792 where you canalso ask to reserve accommodation.
Thanks to the LMS and others, the organisers have some funds to support travel, accommodation expenses and/or registration
fee for a limited number of participants,
in particular young scientists. Participants
are expected to cover travel and accommodation expenses from their own grants
whenever reasonable to do so.   Financial
support can be requested during the registration process.  

WHY BENONCOMMUTATIVE?
A one-day conference will be held on 8
February 2016, at Imperial College London
to mark Travis Schedler's new appointment
there. Three speakers will give broad-interest talks which help answer the titular
question ‘why be noncommutative?’, introducing noncommutative geometry, algebra,
and representation theory, and some recent
applications. Graduate students and post-

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk
doctoral researchers are especially encouraged to attend!  The speakers will be:• Iain Gordon (University of Edinburgh)• Travis Schedler (Imperial College London)• Toby Stafford (University of Manchester)Everyone will be invited to a dinner afterwards, partly subsidized for PhD students.
There is also limited money to support PhD
students' travel to London.   Contact Travis
Schedler at t.schedler@imperial.ac.uk if you
need assistance.
For more information see the website athttps://sites.google.com/site/whybenoncommutative/ which will be regularly updated.
The conference is supported by an LMS
Conference grant celebrating new appointments

MATHEMATICS EMERGING
A tribute to Jackie Stedalland her influence on thehistory of mathematics
The British Society for the History of Mathematics (BSHM) is holding a special two-day
meeting on Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 April
2016 at The Queen's College, Oxford, tocelebrate the work of Jackie Stedall. The
focus will be sixteenth and seventeenth
century European developments in algebra,
analysis and geometry.  It will be a mixtureof general interest sessions and more specialised research topics; the Sunday morning
session will focus on Thomas Harriot.  
Speakers include:• Philip Beeley (Oxford)• Rosie Cretney (Open University)• Robert Goulding (University of Notre
Dame)• Niccolò Guicciardini (University ofBergamo)• Karen Parshall (University of Virginia)• Eleanor Robson (University College
London)• Matthias Schemmel (Max Planck Institute)• Thomas Sonar (Technische Universität
Braunschweig)• Benjamin Wardhaugh (Oxford)newsletter@lms.ac.uk

Provisional fees: BSHM members £60,
(students £30); Non-members:  £90 (students£60). Conference dinner £40, day rate lunch
and refreshments £45, overnight B&B £50.
The conference is being supported by an
LMS Conference grant, the International
Committee for the History of Mathematics
and the Oxford University Mathematical
Institute.
Further information can be found at http://tinyurl.com/oldz8pc.

GROUPS IN GALWAY 2016
Groups in Galway has been running onan annual basis since 1978.   The two-day
meeting on group theory and related topics
will be held at National University of Ireland,
Galway, from Friday 20 to Saturday 21 May
2016. The speakers include:• Collin Bleak (University of St Andrews)• John Burns (NUI Galway)• Francesco de Giovanni (University of
Naples)• Ellen Henke (University of Aberdeen)• Mark Lawson (Heriot-Watt University)• Nadia Mazza (Lancaster University)• Bob Oliver (Université Paris 13)• Shane O'Rourke (Cork Institute ofTechnology)• Said Sidki (Universidade de Brasilia)• Peter Symonds (University of Manchester)
There will be a poster session for students,
PhD students, post-doctoral research fellows
and other young researchers, and researchexpenses prizes will be awarded to the top
ranked posters.   If you are not based in
Galway, you can send a pdf file of your poster
to Sejong Park (sejong.park@nuigalway.ie)
and he will print your poster locally (free ofcharge for the participant), in order to avoid
transport damage.
There is no conference fee.   Further information can be found at the conference
homepage www.maths.nuigalway.ie/conferences/gig16/.   Contact the organizers Ted
Hurley (ted.hurley@nuigalway.ie) or Sejong
Park (sejong.park@nuigalway.ie) if you havemore questions.

No. 454 January 2016

INTEGRABLE SYSTEMSThe third edition of the meeting Integrable
Systems in Newcastle will take place over
two half days, from 5 to 6 February 2016, atthe Department of Mathematics and Information Sciences of Northumbria University,
Newcastle upon Tyne. The workshop will
focus on exploring new connections between
integrability and physics and will promoteinteractions between leading researchers inboth areas. The list of speakers will include:• Martina Balagovic (Newcastle)• Gennady El (Loughborough)• Katrin Leschke (Leicester)• Pierre-Philippe Dechant (York)• Davide Proment (East Anglia)• Noel Smyth (Edinburgh)• Iain W. Stewart (Strathclyde)
There is no registration fee for this event andsupport for the expenses of research students
may be available. For further information
visit the website at http://group28. northumbria.ac.uk/IS/ or contact Benoit Huard (benoit.
huard@northumbria.ac.uk). The meeting is
supported by an LMS Conference grant.

DIFFERENTIAL
EQUATIONSAND POLYNOMIALS
Volume 1
by Dr Mehran Basti
Solving equations are viewed
within thepolynomial-Riccati
DNA structures (on a CD).
Infinity Publishingandmajor online bookstores

45

ObituariesLMS NEWSLETTERKLAUS ROTH

46

Professor Klaus Friedrich
Roth, FRS, FRSE, who waselected a member of the
London MathematicalSociety on 17 May 1951,
and awarded the De
Morgan Medal in 1983,
died on 10 November
2015, aged 90. He was
the first British winnerof the Fields Medal, andmade fundamental contributions to different
areas of number theory, including Diophantine
approximation, the large sieve, irregularities of
distribution and arithmetic combinatorics.
William Chen, David Larman, Trevor Stuart
and Robert Vaughan write: Klaus Roth wasborn on 29 October 1925, in the Germancity of Breslau, in Lower Silesia, Prussia, now
Wrocław in Poland. To escape from Nazism,
he and his parents moved to England in 1933,
with his maternal grandparents, and settled in
London.  He would recall that the flight from
Berlin to London took eight hours and landed
in Croydon. His father had suffered from gas
poisoning during the First World War, and diedwithin a few years of their arrival in England.
Roth studied at St Paul's School, andproceeded to read mathematics at the University of Cambridge, where he was a student at
Peterhouse and also played first board for theuniversity chess team. However, he had many
unhappy and painful memories of his two
years there as an undergraduate. Uncontrollable nerves was to seriously hamper his examination results, and he graduated with thirdclass honours.
After this not too distinguished start to hisacademic career, Roth then did his war time
service as an alien and became a junior master
at Gordonstoun, where he divided his sparetime between roaming the Scottish countryside
on a powerful motorcycle and playing chesswith Robert Combe. On the first day of thefirst British Chess Championships after the war,
Klaus famously went up to Hugh Alexander,
the reigning champion, to tell him that he

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk
would not retain his title. He was of course
right – the previously largely unknown Robert
Combe became the new British Champion.
Peterhouse did not support Roth’s return toCambridge after war service, and his tutor J.C.
Burkill had suggested instead that he pursued‘some commercial job with a statistical bias’.
However, his real ability and potential, particularly his problem solving skills, had not escaped
the eyes of Harold Davenport, who subsequently arranged for him to pursue mathematical research at University College London,
funded by the highest leaving exhibition everawarded by his old school.  Although Theodor
Estermann was officially his thesis advisor, Rothwas heavily influenced by Davenport during
this period, and indeed into the mid 1960s. He
completed his PhD work which Estermann considered good enough for a DSc, and also joined
the staff of the Department of Mathematics.
The early problems Roth studied were centredaround the Hardy-Littlewood technique, thehighlight being undoubtedly his novel application of the technique to sequences that are
not explicitly given and resulting in his famous
result on three terms in arithmetic progression, paving the way for further progress bySzemerédi, Gowers, Green, Tao and others inarithmetic combinatorics.
Davenport’s influence clearly cultivatedRoth’s interest in Diophantine approximation. There is significant work already done
by Dirichlet, Liouville, Thue, Siegel, Dyson andGelfond. A crucial exponent was believed todepend on the degree of the algebraic number
under consideration, but Siegel had conjectured that it should be 2. This is precisely what
Roth showed. In a letter to Davenport, Siegel
commented that this result ‘will be remembered as long as mankind is interested in mathematics’. For this and his result on three terms
in arithmetic progression, Roth was awarded
the Fields Medal in 1958.
In speaking of Roth's work at the Opening
Ceremony of the International Congress ofMathematicians in 1958, Davenport said, ‘The
achievement is one that speaks for itself: itcloses a chapter, and a new chapter is opened.
Roth's theorem settles a question which is bothnewsletter@lms.ac.uk

of a fundamental nature and of extreme difficulty. It will stand as a landmark in mathematics for as long as mathematics is cultivated’, andended with the following words: ‘The Duchess,in Alice in Wonderland, said that there is a
moral in everything if only you can find it. It is
not difficult to find the moral of Dr Roth's work.
It is that the great unsolved problems may stillyield to direct attack however difficult and forbidding they appear to be, and however much
effort has already been spent on them.’
While most mathematicians consider Roth’s
result on Diophantine approximation as his
most famous, it is in fact another problem thatgives him the greatest satisfaction. At about
the same time, he became interested in thequestion of the impossibility of a just distribution for any sequence in the unit interval,
conjectured by van der Corput in 1935. Van
Aardenne-Ehrenfest obtained the first quantitative estimate in 1949. By reformulating the
problem in a geometric setting, Roth obtainedin 1954 the best possible lower bound for themean squares of the discrepancy function. Thisgeometric setting paved the way for what is
now known as geometric discrepancy theory, asubject at the crossroads of harmonic analysis,
combinatorics, approximation theory, probability theory and even group theory. Once
asked why he considered this his best work,
Roth replied, ‘But I started a subject!’ He wasparticularly pleased that J.C. Burkill, who had
remained on good terms, offered the same
opinion.
Further recognition came. Roth was elected
Fellow of the Royal Society in 1960 and also
promoted to a professorship at the Universityof London in 1961. He was very proud that
the Fields Medal, the Fellowship of the Royal
Society and the professorship came somewhat
in reverse order.
The close relationship between Roth andDavenport in those days can be illustrated by acharming incident some time in the 1950s andwhich Heini Halberstam recalled with great
delight. Early one Sunday morning, Davenport
went to his bathroom and switched on thelight. The phone rang, and it was Roth. Could
he possibly come over and explain the proof of

No. 454 January 2016a new result? Davenport suggested that Rothcame after breakfast, but as soon as he put
the phone down, the door bell rang. Roth had
been so eager that he had spent much of theearly morning waiting in the telephone boothacross the street.
It was also at this time at University College
London that Roth met his wife Melek Khaϊry.
It was the first ever university lecture given
by him and the first ever university lectureattended by her. After the lecture, Roth had
asked Halberstam whether he had noticed the
young lady on the front row. ‘I will marry her’
he claimed. By the end of that year, Roth had
felt unable to mark Melek’s examination script,
claiming that he felt ‘unable to be impartial’,much to the amusement of his colleagues.
Another problem at the time was that during
their courtship, Melek's sister Hoda often camealong. To counter that, Roth brought along
his best friend at the time as a distraction for
Hoda. His friend took to his assignment withgreat gusto, and indeed married Hoda.
In the mid 1960s, Roth produced his seminal
paper on the large sieve. This is a major step
towards better understanding of primes inarithmetic progressions, and the beginningof a major development in analytic number
theory.
At about the same time, he had planned
to emigrate to the United States to take up
the offer of a position at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology where he had spenta year a decade earlier. Imperial College intervened, and agreement was reached in the
middle of a reception at the Soviet Embassyin London. Roth said that Sir Patrick Linstead,then Rector of Imperial College, told him that
he needed to make an application, but that
there would be no other applicant. So Rothjoined Imperial College in 1966 after a sabbatical at the MIT, and remained there until his
retirement.
At Imperial College, Roth continued an
extensive study of the irregularities of integer
sequences relative to arithmetic progressions and also made substantial progress on
Heilbronn’s triangle problem. His famous
1/4-theorem of 1964 is the basis of a Fourier

47

ObituariesLMS NEWSLETTER48

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

De Morgan House opened on 23 October 1998 by Fields Medalist Sir Michael Atiyah (1966) in the presence of Field Medalists
Klaus Roth (1958), Alan Baker (1970), Dan Quillen (1978), Timothy Gowers (1998), Simon Donaldson (1986), Richard Borcherds (1998)

transform approach to irregularities of distribution by Beck in the 1980s, leading to spectacular results. His last work concerns the introduction of probability theory into the study
of upper bounds in irregularities of distribution, paving the way for many applications
in numerical integration, with implications inmany branches of science, engineering andfinance.
Roth moved with Melek to Inverness after hisretirement. Melek’s death in 2002 was a great
setback, and Roth never recovered from thisloss.
Roth was an excellent lecturer. He explained
things so clearly that a good student could
often just sit there and listen, and only had torecord the details afterwards in the evening.
However, he occasionally would have anoff day, and he warned his students at the
beginning of the year that they would noticethese very easily. One of us recalls that on one
occasion, Roth wrote down a very complicatedexpression on the blackboard, then retired tothe back of the room. A lot of thought was
followed by an equal sign, and he retired tothe back of the room again. After a long time

he came once more up to the board and wrote
down the same complicated expression on theright hand side. The audience held their collective breath at this profound assertion. But
the best was yet to come. He then proceeded
to write down +O(1), at which point all burst
out laughing. Roth looked at his masterpieceagain, turned to the class and protested, ‘But it
is correct, isn't it?’
Outside mathematics, Roth enjoyed ballroom
dancing, and would waltz away the evening
elegantly with Melek. They took this very
seriously, to the point that they had a roomin their Inverness house specially fitted for
dancing practice. For many years while they
were in London, they had dancing lessons
with Alan Fletcher, who with his wife Hazel
were then world ballroom dancing champion.
Indeed, Roth dedicated one of his research
papers to Alan. He explained that he had
been bothered by a problem which he could
not solve and was therefore not dancing very
well, and that Alan had annoyed him so muchby asking him week after week without failwhether he had solved his problem. So when
he finally managed to crack it, he needed tonewsletter@lms.ac.uk

acknowledge Alan for having provided theannoyance.
Roth had maintained great modesty throughout his life. He felt very privileged to have been
given the opportunity to pursue what he loved,and very lucky that he had some moderate
success. He had always been very generous
to his colleagues, and had inspired many toachieve good results.
Roth also received the Sylvester Medalof the Royal Society in 1991. He was also
elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal Societyof Edinburgh in 1993, Fellow of University
College London in 1979 and of Imperial College
London in 1999, and an Honorary Fellow of Peterhouse in 1989.

JOHN HUMPHREYSDrJohnFrancis
Humphreys, who waselected a member oftheLondonMathematical Society on 20
June 1968, died on 13
October 2015, aged 73.
Russell Higgs writes:
John Francis Humphreys
was an accomplishedmathematician who made contributions togroup theory and coding theory, especiallyto the theory of projective representations offinite groups.
John initially studied for his PhD under
N. Blackburn at the University of Manchester and later under Sandy Green. John spentnearly all his working career at the Universityof Liverpool, becoming a Reader there in the
1980s. He also spent two years sabbatical at the
University of Notre Dame from 1982 to 1984.
From 1969 onwards John published about 50
research papers, two undergraduate textbooks
and one research monograph. He had asuperb reputation as an expositor and lecturer,
inspiring generations of undergraduates inalgebra as well as his many PhD students. His
book (with M.Y. Prest) Numbers, Groups &Codes is a standard textbook in many universities worldwide and is now in its second edition.

No. 454 January 2016

John’s work was largely concerned withstudying and constructing the irreducible
projective representations of finite groups,
such as the symmetric groups. This is akin tonormal representation theory, but with thetwist that a non-trivial 2-cocycle introduces.
John also considered the more complicatedtopic of projective modular representations
and the assignations of such representations
into blocks. One of John’s notable achievements was to introduce (with P.N. Hoffman)a new group construction, called the twisted
central product. This construction produces (ina non-trivial manner) a central extension of
the direct product of two finite groups froma central extension of each and it also enables
the irreducible representations of the resulting
twisted central product to be readily identified.
John also investigated the Schur multiplier ofvarious types of groups such as those of therepresentation groups of the irreducible finitereflection groups. He became interested incoding theory in the latter part of his careerand provided an algebraic decoding for anumber of quadratic residue codes over nonbinary fields.

BARRY COOPER
Professor
S.
Barry
Cooper,electedamember of the London
Mathematical Society
on 17 October 1974,
died on 26 October
2015, aged 72.
Richard Elwes, Andy
Lewis-Pye,DugaldMacpherson and Stan
Wainer write: Barryattended Chichester High School for Boys, andgraduated from Oxford in 1966. He studied
for a PhD, formally under R.L. Goodstein at
Leicester, but worked mainly in Manchester with Mike Yates, the only established UK
researcher in Barry's chosen field: the structure-theory of the Turing degrees. He wasappointed Lecturer at the University of Leeds
in 1969, where he remained, except for regular49

Obituaries, Reviews

LMS NEWSLETTER

50

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

sabbaticals and invited visits abroad. He wasawarded his Professorship in 1996.
By this time, the study of degree structures
had matured into a mathematical disciplineof great technical sophistication. Known forhis deep, complex constructions, Barry playeda prominent international role in this growth.
He defined and intensively studied the jumpclasses, now objects of central importance.
His theorem that every degree computably
enumerable in and above 0' is the jump of aminimal degree, is regarded as a classic. He
championed the study of the enumeration
degrees, establishing many of their fundamental properties. In later years, Barry also became
interested in the practical and philosophicalsignificance of the limits of computability.
The year 2012 marked the centenary of thebirth of Alan Turing, a celebration which
Barry led with boundless energy, and which
did much to bring Turing the public recognition he deserves. Barry became the event's
media spokesman and chaired a 6-monthprogramme on Semantics and Syntax at theGeometry in a
Fréchet Context
C. T. J. Dodson,
University of Manchester

George Galanis,Hellenic Naval Academy, Piraeus, Greece

Efstathios Vassiliou,
University of Athens, Greece• Proposes a new approach that
overcomes many complicationsof the geometric theory• Self-contained chapters and detailed
proofs help the reader progresssystematically through the book
• Includes an extensive introduction to thegeometry of Banach manifolds and bundles

Isaac Newton Institute. His edited volume withJan van Leeuwen Alan Turing: His Work andImpact (2013) later won the Association ofAmerican Publishers' RR Hawkins Award.
Popular with undergraduates as an outstanding and charismatic teacher, Barry supervised many successful PhD students, and wasfounder and president of ‘Computability inEurope’, a flourishing association that now has
more than 1,000 members. He was awardedan Honorary Degree from Sofia University in
2011.
Beyond mathematics, Barry played rugby for
England under-16s and became a keen long
distance runner, with a personal best marathon
time of 2hr 48min. He co-founded the Leeds
Jazz non-profit organisation in 1984, and was
involved in numerous political campaigns,
notably the Chile Solidarity Campaign forrefugees from 1973.
Barry is survived by his wife, Kate, and theirsons Evan and Mark, and by his daughters
Carrie and Shirin with his former partner Sue
Buckle.

Sheaves andFunctions
Modulo p
Lenny Taelman,
Universiteit van Amsterdam• Makes the sheaves-functions
dictionary accessible to readers
without a strong background inalgebraic geometry• Illustrated with a wide range ofexamples and exercises, fromelementary to advanced• Later chapters include infinite
coefficients, L-functions, andapplications to special values ofGoss L-functions and zeta functions

London Mathematical Society Lecture Note Series, No. 428

London Mathematical Society Lecture Note Series, No. 429

Paperback | 978-1-316-60195-2 | December 2015 | £55.00

Paperback | 978-1-316-50259-4 | November 2015 | £40.00

www.cambridge.org/lms428

www.cambridge.org/lms429

www.cambridge.org/mathsnewsletter@lms.ac.uk

No. 454 January 2016

THE THEORY THAT WOULD NOT DIE: HOW BAYES’ RULE CRACKED THE ENIGMA CODE,HUNTED DOWN RUSSIAN SUBMARINES, AND EMERGED TRIUMPHANT FROM TWO CENTURIES
OF CONTROVERSY by Sharon Bertsch Mcgrayne, Yale University Press, 2012, pp 336, £10.99,
US$16.00, ISBN 978-0300188226.
This popular science history of BayesianParts III to V of the book take us ‘there’ witharguments and the controversy associatedtitles reflecting the triumphant dynamic:
with them first appeared in 2011 and the “Glorious Revival,” “To Prove its Worth”
present edition has a new preface, epilogue and “Victory.” At the time of writing living
and case studies. The book was received en- memory still extended back to the Second
thusiastically because it is involving, wide
World War which is the subject of Part II.
ranging and well researched; it has a large
Part I, “Enlightenment and the Anti-Bayesbibliography and theian Reaction,” prepares
long list of experts
the ground highlightconsulted
includesing the founding work
many of the actors inof Bayes and Laplace inthe story—they werethe eighteenth century‘there’!
and, in the twentieth,‘There’ was principally
the systematising oftheAnglo-American
the classical approachstatistical community in
by Ronald Fisher andthe decades after the
Jerzy Neyman in theSecond World War andinter-war period witha bitter controversy overthe Bayesian responsethe validity of BayesianofHaroldJeffreysmethods. These are
in 1939 with detours
inferential
methods
including the design
involving subjective orof telephone systems
logicalprobabilities
and Poincaré’s contriand based on the use
bution to the Dreyfus
of Bayes’ theorem, thetrial. The discussion inelementary result on
the later parts ranges
conditional probability;
beyond the core stathe opposed “classical”
tistical community andapproach is based onsuch players as Jimmie
a frequentist concept of probability andSavage, Dennis Lindley and Jack Good toevaluates statistical methods on the basis actuaries, business decision makers, militaryof their properties in repeated sampling. scientists and others in contact with the
The atmosphere of the times is caught in astatisticians but there is no attempt at a sysjoke quoted on p. 51: “What’s the collective
tematic treatment of Bayesian arguments
noun for a group of statisticians? A quarrel.” by philosophers, scientists, lawyers and
The author’s use of the term, “Bayes’ rule,” others. Again, while the book brings to life
conveys something of the flavour of the con- the personalities of such critics as Fisher andtroversy. She uses it, not as another name for Neyman, it does not seriously engage with
Bayes’ theorem, but for something akin to
their arguments.
the rule of a religious order—something toPopular science books aim to inform andbe “embraced” (p. 120) or “abandoned” (p. enthuse. It is hard to imagine a reader who232) and the focus of “two centuries of con- will not pick up something of the author’s
troversy” (title).
(and her witnesses’) enthusiasm for the51

Reviews

LMS NEWSLETTER

52

subject. The technical bar is set low—the
only equation in the main text is “Prior times
likelihood is proportional to the posterior”—which ensures that the book will reach a
range of readers: everyone will get a senseof what it is all about and be exposed to avariety of interesting subjects, including
cracking the Enigma code, hunting down
Russian submarines, machine translation
and risk analysis for nuclear power stations,while the expert reader will adapt to the informality and use the notes and bibliography to pursue topics in depth.
The Theory That Would Not Die is not only
the first popular history of this development,
it is—I believe—the first book-length history
and the first attempt to synthesise materials
from the Second World War and after. Fienberg’s article [2] addressed to Bayesian statisticians has similar scope but contains lesslively detail while the scholarly histories ofDale [1] and Hald [3] treat only Part I of thestory. The Theory will be a first recourse for

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk
anybody interested in this development
and, while it is a treasury of wonderfulstories well-told, I am less enthusiastic about
the thesis of the victory of the theory thatwould not die. On my reading the life anddeath struggle was not a matter of centuries
but of decades in the twentieth century andconfined to a particular scholarly communityand even in that community the struggle
ended where it started—with Bayesian andclassical methods co-existing and with mostpracticioners unwilling to commit either
way to the rule.
John Aldrich
University of Southampton
References
1. A. I. Dale (1999) A History of Inverse
Probability: From Thomas Bayes to Karl Pearson,second edition, New York: Springer.
2. S. E. Fienberg (2006) When did BayesianInference become “Bayesian”? Bayesian Analysis,
1, (1), 1-40.
3. A. Hald (1998) A History of Mathematical
Statistics from 1750 to 1930, New York: Wiley.

UNDERSTANDING MATHEMATICAL PROOF
by J. Taylor and R. Garnier, Chapman & Hall, 2014, pp 414, £29.99, ISBN 978-1466514904.
It is an unfortunate truth that mathematical proofs are often not a priority in thecurrent school curricula. As a result of
that, many students of mathematics atuniversity level often struggle with thisnotion in the initial stages of their studies,sometimes even in more advanced stages.  
The book under review aims at helping
students bridge the gap between early
exposure to mathematics and a moremature involvement with this discipline byproviding a well-written introduction to
the notion of proof. In this respect, it isaimed at university students at beginnerlevel of studies of mathematics or ofstudies in which mathematical reasoning
plays an important role.
Roughly speaking, the first part of thebook, comprising more or less Chapters 1
to 4, focuses on explaining what proving
in mathematics is all about, whereas thesecond part aims at providing general

guidelines for finding proofs. The bookis organized as follows. In Chapter 1 theauthors introduce the general notion of
proof, understood broadly speaking as
a deductive discourse conducted withinsome precisely delimited language andaccording to precisely specified rules. They
call the readers' attention to the notionof proof as backbone of mathematics, thevery characteristic that distinguishes mathematics from any other cognitive activities.
I do not need to delve into this here, ofcourse. Chapter 2 provides a fairly clear introduction to basic formal logic. Chapter
3 introduces the notions from set theory
occurring universally within mathematics,
specifically the notions of set, membership, function, the basic operations on sets,
and so on.  Chapter 4 provides an analysisof the logical structure of typical proofs(e.g. proofs that can be split into consideration of various possible cases). Startingnewsletter@lms.ac.uk

with Chapter 5, the focus shifts towards
pointing at specific general strategies forfinding proofs in mathematics. The introduction to Chapter 5 expresses quite nicely
what the approach is going to be. The
remaining chapters present variations on
this approach, with thefinal chapter, Chapter
8, giving a particularly
good treatment of themethod of proof by
induction.
The book is written
in a precise and clear
style, with lots of appropriately
chosenexamples and a sufficient amount of (clear)
diagrams.
Onthedown side, there arealso a number of small
typos, which after all
should not cause muchtrouble to attentive
readers, as well assome slight inaccuracies or comments which
are beside the point.
One example of thisappears in the second paragraph of page
164: ‘The existence of two geometries, one
in which the parallel axiom is true and one
in which it is false, has certain implications.
In particular, it is not possible for boththe parallel axiom and its negation to betrue, self-evidently or otherwise.’  This, ofcourse, is correct, but one certainly does
not need to know about the consistency

No. 454 January 2016of any geometry in order to make thatpoint.   In my view the exposition presents
also oversimplifications in the discussionof some points. This last feature is notnecessarily bad in a book meant as introductory text to this topic, but perhaps
somereferencetomoresophisticatedmaterial could havebeen included.   Muchof the focus is in explaining specific basic
techniques like thatof proof by induction
and, in general, on
proofs of a rather
constructive nature. I
would have liked tosee more on proofs
employing more nonconstructive methods,
for example using the
Axiom of Choice.   This
could have led to somediscussion, at least on
a marginal level, as towhat axioms would bereasonable to employ
in mathematics and,perhaps,other(thought--provoking)issues of foundational flavour.
To conclude, this book, although clearly
not aimed at the typical reader of LMS
reviews, could be useful to, and enjoyedby, students seeking a concise introduction to the notion of mathematical proof.
David Aspero
University of East Anglia

INSIDE INTERESTING INTEGRALS
by Paul J. Nahin, Springer, 2015, pp 412, £31.99,€€34.99, US$49.99, ISBN 978-1493912773.
There are few things more infuriating andenjoyable than a recalcitrant integral. The
fact that it is not necessarily clear whether
the integral can even be evaluated analytically is always tantalising. Perhaps it can’t
be evaluated... or then again perhaps it
can. If you could only discover the rightline of attack it might become trivial.
Alternatively, you could spend a day
showing that it (probably) can’t be done.
I vividly remember my old A level mathematics teacher saying that evaluating
integrals was an art. It was a matter of developing an instinct for the right substitu-

53

Reviews

LMS NEWSLETTER54

http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

tion, or having the insight to perform in- much more than a first course in calculus
tegration by parts multiple times. I could(though he still gets all the way to multiple
be then, and still can be today, waylaid
integrals and complex contour integraby an elegant integral which I am sure, tion), makes it an ideal book for students.
if I just fiddle with it a while longer, will
The book is written in a ‘chatty’ lightyield to me. I have been known to browse
hearted style, with a sprinkling of histhrough Gradshteyn and Ryzhik's Table
torical context and, where appropriate,of Integrals, Series, and Products just to
pointers to further reading. Sections canwonder at the beauty of the results. It is, be read independently of each other, withI suppose, a vice not uncommon amongst each chapter concluding with a set ofmathematicians.
‘Challenge Problems’ to test understanding
If you share any of my weakness for and engage the reader actively in problem
integrals, then Paul Nahin’s Inside Inter- solving.
esting Integrals will be a delight. This is
That said I must give a word of warninga book of techniques and (as the author to pure mathematicians: Nahin is quite
himself calls them) ‘tricks’ which lead theup front about his contentment toreader step-by-step through a wide range
take an informal approach, or as heof wonderful definite integrals, from:describes it the approach of the ‘devilmay-care,eighteenth
centurymathematics of Euler’s day’. As he says in the
preface, ‘I am not going to be terribly
concerned,
for example, with proving theto:uniform convergence of anything, and if
you don’t know what that means don’t
worry about it because I’m not going
to worry about it either’. While this isand many, many more. It is a volume that probably enough to make the hair of most
could almost be described as a math- of the pure mathematicians I know standematician’s coffee table book. It can be on end, it made me laugh out loud, andopened casually and leafed through until
he immediately had me (an applied maththe reader spots an integral that piques ematician) on side. It also sets the tone ofher interest with the remark ‘I wonder the book: bright and breezy, pragmatic
how you would show that…?’ And, one ofwithout being misleading, and with thethe beauties author happy to check each of his resultsof the book via MATLAB’s numerical integrator quadis that Nahin
to settle any doubts.
shows in full
The moderately hefty price tag for
detailhow a paperback may cause the reader toeachresulthesitate before purchasing this volume,isobtained, but cast caution to the wind and buy it.
givingtheIt’ll be one of the best
reader a clear
narrative
from start tofinish.
Thiscoupled withpounds you will spend this year.
the fact thattheauthorMark McCartney
assumesnotUniversity of Ulsternewsletter@lms.ac.uk

CALENDAR OF EVENTSThis calendar lists Society meetings andother mathematical events. Further
information may be obtained from theappropriate LMS Newsletter whose number
is given in brackets. A fuller list is givenon the Society’s website (www.lms.ac.uk/
content/calendar). Please send updates andcorrections to calendar@lms.ac.uk.

January 2016
4-7 Classic and Stochastic GeometricMechanics, Imperial College London (453)
5 Algebra, Coding Theory and Cryptography
Workshop, Durham (452)
5-6 Adaptive Algorithms for Computational
PDEs, Birmingham (452)11-12 Multi-Armed Bandit Workshop,
Lancaster (453)
20-22 British Postgraduate Model Theory
Conference, Manchester (452)27 Well-posedness and Singularity
Formation for Nonlinear Evolution
Problems, King's College London (452)february 2016
4-5 From Symbolic Dynamics toApproximation Methods, King's College
London (453)
5-6 Integrable Systems, Newcastle (454)
8 Why be Noncommutative? University
College London (454)26 Mary Cartwright Lecture, London (454)

No. 454 January 201630-2 Apr Singularities and Applications,Liverpool (454)aPRIL 2016
4-8 Easter Probability Meeting on Random
Structures Arising in Physics and Analysis,
Lancaster University (453)
5-8 BAMC 2016, Oxford
9-10 Mathematics Emerging, The Queen's
College, Oxford (454)11-15 From the Grain to the Continuum, INI
Workshop, Cambridge (454)

MAY 2016
18-20 The Dymamics of Complex Systems,
Warwick (454)20-21 Groups in Galway, National Universityof Ireland, Galway (454)july 2016
4-8 Modern Topics in Nonlinear PDE andGeometric Analysis, Reading (454)8 LMS Graduate Student Meeting, London
8 LMS Meeting, London
18-22 7ECM, TU Berlin (451)
21 LMS Meeting at the 7ECM, Berlin

AUGUST 2016
1-4 Young Researchers in Mathematics
Conference, St Andrews
25-26 Caucasian Mathematics Conference,
Turkey (453)

SEPTEMBER 2016
MARCH 201616-20 Nordic Congress of Mathematicians,
Stockholm (453)
21 LMS Meeting at BMC 2016, Bristol (454)21-24 BMC 2016, Bristol (454)21-25 LMS Invited Lectures, Edgar Knobloch(Berkeley), Loughborough (453)29-1 Apr Algebraisation and Geometrisationin the Langlands Programme, Bristol (453)

18-23 Heidelberg Laureate Forum (454)november 201611 LMS Graduate Student Meeting, London
11 LMS Annual General Meeting, London

December 2016
20 LMS South West & South Wales Regional
Meeting, Bath55

LMS ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
held on Friday 13 November 2016(see report on page 32)

Whitehead Prize certificates presented to
Dr David Loeffler and Dr Sarah Zerbes

Whitehead Prize certificate presented to  
Dr James Maynard

Whitehead Prize certificate presented toProfessor Christoph OrtnerWhitehead Prize certificate presented toProfessor Mason Porter

Whitehead Prize certificate presented to  Professor Dominic Vella  

Senior Whitehead Prize certificate presented toProfessor Robert Mackay, FRS