LONDONLONDON MATHEMATICALMATHEMATICAL SOCIETYSOCIETY NEWSLETTER No. 438 July 2014 Society Meetings and Events 2014 The London Mathematical Society is pleased to announce its Wednesday 9 July LMS Popular Lectures London page 17 150th Anniversary Wednesday 23 July LMS Spitalfields Day INI, Cambridge Celebrations 1 page 13 (1865 – 2015) Tuesday 19 August LMS Meeting and Reception We invite you to join us in celebrating this historic occasion. ICM 2014, Seoul page 15 Themes for the Anniversary Saturday 150 Years of the LMS and Mathematics 6 September Mathematics and the Mathematics as Part of our Culture First World War New ways of Communicating Mathematics Meeting, London page 27 There will be an extended and varied programme of events throughout Wednesday 2015 in celebration of the vitality of mathematics in the UK, looking 24 September back over 150 years of achievements and looking forward to exciting LMS Popular Lectures opportunities in mathematics for future generations. Birmingham page 17 Friday 14 November For information and an up-to-date calendar, please visit LMS AGM www.lms.ac.uk/2015 London To receive regular updates about events and lectures occurring during NEWSLETTER the 150th Anniversary Year, please sign up to the emailing list located ONLINE: at the above address. newsletter.lms.ac.uk LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk [email protected] No. 438 July 2014 Contents LMS PRIZES 2014 No. 438 July 2014 The winners of the LMS Prizes for 2014 were announced at the Society meeting on 4 July 2014. The Society extends its congratulations to these winners, and its thanks to all the nominators, referees and members of the Prizes Committee for their contributions to the Committee’s work this year. PROFESSOR MILES REID, FRS, of the University of Warwick, is awarded a Pólya Prize for his exceptionally creative work on higher dimensional algebraic geometry; in particular, on canonical singularities, the MacKay correspondence, the explicit study of 3-dimensional flips, the structure of Gorenstein rings, and for his inspired expositions. 20 16 PROFESSOR MARTIN HAIRER, FRS, of the University of Warwick, is awarded a Fröhlich Prize for his work on the interface between probability theory and partial differential equations; a body of work that is widely recognised as revolutionizing an Awards Heilbronn Annual Conference....................32 entire field of research. Queen's Birthday Honours 2014.................4 Huxley Meeting...........................................36 IMA Conferences..........................................33 Calendar of Events.......................................50 PROFESSOR CAROLINE SERIES, of the University of Warwick, is awarded a Senior INI Methods for Mathematical and Empiri- LMS Items Anne Bennett Prize in recognition of her leading contributions to hyperbolic geometry cal Analysis of Microbial Communities...... 40 and symbolic dynamics, and of the major impact of her numerous initiatives towards 150th Anniversary Celebrations.................1 INI Structure, Function and Dynamics........23 the advancement of women in mathematics. Congratulations......................................4 2 Limit Theorums............................................38 3 Council Diary................................................6 PROFESSOR DANIEL FREED, PROFESSOR MICHAEL LMS Grant Schemes.....................................7 UK Probability Meeting..............................37 HOPKINS and PROFESSOR CONSTANTIN TELEMAN are LMS Prizes 2014............................................3 Members' opinions awarded a Senior Berwick Prize in recognition of their paper LMS Undergraduate Research Bursaries....14 Should Mathematicians “Loop groups and twisted K-theory”, Journal of Topology, Open House 2014........................................16 Cooperate with GCHQ?..............................42 4 (2011), 737-799. The paper sets out the foundations of twisted equivariant K-theory, and prepares the ground for the LMS Meetings News proof that the twisted equivariant K-theory of a compact Lie ICM Meeting and Reception......................15 Challenges for UK Mathematical Scientists group is isomorphic to the Verlinde algebra of its loop group. Mathematics and the First World War........27 in Higher Education....................................10 PROFESSOR CLÉMENT MOUHOT, of the University of Cambridge, is awarded a Popular Lectures 2014................................17 European News............................................18 Whitehead Prize for fundamental mathematical contributions to the foundations of Spitalfields Day: Advances in the Mathematics Policy Round-up...................4 statistical mechanics and the Boltzmann equation. Mathematics of Water Waves..................13 Turing Gateway to Mathematics................16 LMS Records of Proceedings Obituaries Northern Regional Meeting 2014..............26 Gelbtuch, Adam...........................................45 PROFESSOR RUTH BAKER, of the University of Oxford, is awarded a Whitehead Prize for her outstanding contributions to the field of Mathematical Biology. British Mathematical Colloquium..............21 MacBeath, Murray.......................................44 Meetings Reports Analytic Number Theory.............................29 LMS Gresham College Lecture..................22 DR TOM COATES of Imperial College London is awarded a Whitehead Prize for his in- BMC/BAMC Joint Meeting.........................28 LMS Northern Regional Meeting...............24 British Algebraic Geometry........................36 fluential work in Gromov-Witten theory: the quantum Lefschetz theorem, the crepant LMS Women in Mathematics Day..............20 resolution conjecture, the quantum cohomology of stacks, the higher genus theory of British Logic Colloquium............................37 Reviews Calabi-Yau manifolds, and the Fanosearch program. British Science Festival...............................34 48 British Topology...........................................38 Beautiful Geometry..................................... CStar..............................................................28 Knots Unravelled.........................................47 PROFESSOR DANIELA KUHN and PROFESSOR DERYK OSTHUS, of the University of Birmingham, are jointly awarded a Whitehead Prize for Discontinuous Galerkin Methods..............29 Primality Testing for Beginners.................49 their many results in extremal graph theory and related areas. Several of Function Theory........................................... Visit 36 their papers resolve long-standing open problems in the area. Generalized Functions.................................35 Gerhard Kellar..............................................28 LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk [email protected] No. 438 July 2014 QUEEN’S BIRTHDAY HONOURS 2014 life sciences, for example in biomaterials, EPSRC SATs conference microscopy, DNA sequencing and magnetic The 2014 EPSRC SATs conference was held in Congratulations to the following who have of Risk, University of Cambridge, for services to resonance imaging. May and brought together members of the been recognised in the Queen’s Birthday statistics. Academic and industry figures including Lord Strategic Advisory Teams across the engineering Honours list: Commander of the Order of the British Empire Darzi (Imperial College London), Professor Sir and physical sciences to seek advice and share Dame Commander of the Order of the Bath (CBE) John Bell (University of Oxford) and Professor plans for the future. (DCB) Professor Denise Anne Lievesley, Professor of Patrick Vallance (GlaxoSmithKline) discussed EPSRC’s new CEO, Philip Nelson opened Ms Jilian Norma Matheson, National Statistician Statistics and Head of School of Social Science the increasing importance for the future of the conference, introducing himself and his and Permanent Secretary, Office for National and Public Policy, King's College London, for various areas of research - from big data and early thinking on taking up the role. All SAT Statistics and Chief Executive, UK Statistics services to social science. genomics, to new drug discovery techniques, members, including new members joining from Authority, for services to Government Statistics. Office of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) to medical devices for surgery. April, had the opportunity to input into the Knights Batchelor (KB) Dr Penelope Jane Davies, Senior Lecturer in The review group made several recommen- Monitoring Portfolio Evolution exercise as part Professor David John Spiegelhalter, OBE, FRS, Mathematics, University of Strathclyde, for dations to ensure that institutions effectively of the Shaping Capability strategy and start to Winton Professor for the Public Understanding services to mathematics. supported the increasing integration between engage with the BIS consultation for a share of disciplines. These included: £1.1 billion capital investment. • proposals to encourage interdisciplinary A summary of outputs will be available at CONGRATULATIONS working; www.epsrc.ac.uk. Congratulations to Professor Atwell R. Turquette (elected an LMS member 21 October 1971), • the role for challenge-driven research who celebrates his 100th birthday on 14 July 2014. • the need for doctoral training in interdisci- Report on the economic significance of the UK plinary research science base • incorporating engineering and physical sci- ‘A new report commissioned by the Campaign 4 MATHEMATICS POLICY ROUND-UP ences into the UK strategy for life sciences for Science