LONDONLONDON MATHEMATICALMATHEMATICAL SOCIETYSOCIETY

NEWSLETTER No. 439 September 2014

Society Meetings HIGHEST HONOUR FOR UK and Events MATHEMATICAN Professor Martin Hairer, FRS, 2014 University of Warwick, has become the ninth UK based Saturday mathematician to win the 6 September prestigious Fields Medal over Mathematics and the its 80 year history. The medal First World War recipients were announced Meeting, London on Wednesday 13 August in page 15 a ceremony at the four-year- ly International Congress for 1 Wednesday Mathematicians, which on this 24 September occasion was held in Seoul, South Korea. LMS Popular Lectures See page 4 for the full report. Birmingham page 12 Friday LMS ANNOUNCES SIMON TAVARÉ 14 November AS PRESIDENT-DESIGNATE LMS AGM © The University of Cambridge take over from the London current President, Professor Terry Wednesday Lyons, FRS, in 17 December November 2015. SW & South Wales Professor Tavaré is Meeting a versatile math- Plymouth ematician who has established a distinguished in- ternational career culminating in his current role as The London Mathematical Director of the Cancer Research Society is pleased to announce UK Cambridge Institute and Professor Simon Tavaré, Professor in DAMTP, where he NEWSLETTER FRS, FMedSci, University of brings his understanding of sto- ONLINE: Cambridge, as President-Des- chastic processes and expertise newsletter.lms.ac.uk ignate. Professor Tavaré will in the data science of DNA se- (Cont'd on page 3) LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

Contents No. 439 September 2014

15 44

Awards Partial Differential Equations...... 37 Collingwood Memorial Prize...... 11 Valediction to Jeremy Gray...... 33 Calendar of Events...... 50 News LMS Items European News...... 16 HEA STEM Strategic Project...... LMS Announces Simon Tavaré as 6 Highest Honour for UK Mathematician...... President-Designate...... 1 4 Mathematics Policy Round-up...... LMS Council Diary...... 13 7 New International Women in Maths 2 LMS Elections 2014...... 11 Website...... LMS Grant Schemes...... 8 6 LMS Honorary Membership 2014...... 5 Obituaries Newsletter on-line...... 6 Broomhead, D...... 42 Open House 2014...... 13 Sankaran, S...... 43 LMS Meetings Readers' Opinions Mathematics and the First World War...... 15 Challenges for UK Scientists in Higher Popular Lectures 2014...... 12 Education...... 39 LMS Records of Proceedings Challenges for UK Scientists in Higher Education: Response...... Joint Meeting with the Royal 41 Fall in Numbers of Applications by Meteorological Society...... 18 Foreign Students to UK Universities...... Midlands Regional Meeting 2014...... 19 38 Meetings Reports Bianchi and Siegel Modular Forms...... Analysis Day...... 32 26 EMS Meeting of Council...... BCS-FCS Evening Seminar...... 36 16 Brian Hartley Memorial Meeting...... 37 LMS Midlands Regional Meeting 2014...... 20 Bruhat-Tits Buildings...... 32 LMS Popular Lectures 2014...... 20 CERME 9...... 31 Projection and Slicing Theorems in Cluster Algebras and Preprojective Fractal Geometry...... 22 Algebras...... 29 Representations of Hecke Algebras...... 25 Continued Fractions and Geometry Spectral Analysis and Differential of Lattices...... 32 Equations...... 24 Derived Categories Introductory School...... 33 Reviews Evolution Equations...... 37 How Not to be Wrong...... 46 INI Engineering and Control of Natural Our Mathematical Universe...... 45 and Synthetic Microbial Communities...... 34 Radical Geometry: Modern Art of INI Periodic, Almost-Periodic, and South America...... 43 Random Operators...... 34 The Man of Numbers...... 47 INI Random Geometry Programme...... 35 Visits Integrable Systems in Newcastle...... 38 Ghandehari, Mahya...... 29 Multiscale PDE Systems...... 37 Putnam, Andrew...... 29 [email protected] No. 439 September 2014 quencing to understand cancer biology. first volume in the EMS Monographs in Simon Tavaré obtained his PhD in prob- Mathematics series. ability and statistics in 1979 from the Univer- Simon Tavaré is recognised as an inter- sity of Sheffield. He then began his research nationally excellent communicator. He is career in the US where he held positions at invited to give this year’s Einstein Lecture the University of Utah and Colorado State to the American Mathematical Society, one University, moving to the University of of the most prestigious of the AMS lectures; Southern California (USC) where he held a other recent speakers were Tao and Simons. professorship in mathematics as well as the Professor Tavaré said "I am honoured to be Kawamoto Chair in Biological Science. the next President of the LMS. An important In 2003 Professor Tavaré returned to the UK role for the office is promoting the central from his distinguished chair at USC to take importance of mathematics in society and up joint roles at the University of Cambridge the necessity of ensuring the overall health as Professor in the Department of Applied of the discipline, and, with the help of the Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and LMS members and the wider mathematical Professor of Cancer Research (Bioinfor- community, I hope to continue Terry’s efforts matics) in the Department of Oncology. In in this direction." 2006 he was appointed to the Cambridge Professor Lyons said "I am delighted that Research Institute, which became the Simon has accepted the nomination to Cambridge Institute when it merged with become the next LMS President. Simon per- the University in January 2013. In February sonifies the way that mathematics can con- 2013, Professor Tavaré became Director of tribute to the wider society at a high level; 3 the new Institute. In 2009 Professor Tavaré he brings deep expertise in data science, and was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of a strong background in rigorous mathemat- Medical Sciences (FMedSci) and in 2011 he ics, to his research into critical questions in was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society cancer. He is a tremendous communicator (FRS). and has experience in making the case for Professor Tavaré would be the first to ac- Mathematics with ministers and funders. I knowledge that his current work relies on am confident that his presidency will bring strong training in combinatorics and proba- a great deal to the society, to our members, bility theory; in his earlier years he published and to the wider mathematical communi- papers in the Annals of Probability and the ties."

Editorial team Publication dates and deadlines http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk Published monthly, except August. Items and Editorial office General Editor advertisements by the first day of the month prior London Mathematical Society, Mr A.J.S. Mann to publication, or the closest preceding working day. De Morgan House, 57–58 Russell ([email protected]) Notices and advertisements are not accepted for Square, London WC1B 4HS events that occur in the first week of the publication Reports Editor (t: 020 7637 3686; month. f: 020 7323 3655) Professor R.A. Wilson ([email protected]) News items and notices in the Newsletter may be Events calendar freely used elsewhere unless otherwise stated, Updates and corrections to Reviews Editor although attribution is requested when reproducing [email protected] Professor D. Singerman whole articles. Contributions to the Newsletter ([email protected]) are made under a non-exclusive licence; please Articles Send articles to Administrative Editor contact the author or photographer for the rights to [email protected] S.M. Oakes reproduce. The LMS cannot accept responsibility for ([email protected]) the accuracy of information in the Newsletter. Views Advertising expressed do not necessarily represent the views or For rates and guidelines see Typeset by the LMS at De policy of the London Mathematical Society. www.lms.ac.uk/newsletter/ Morgan House; printed by ratecard.html Holbrooks Printers Ltd. Charity registration number: 252660. LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

HIGHEST HONOUR FOR UK MATHEMATICAN

Professor Martin Hairer FRS, from the Uni- interface arising in physics. These problems versity of Warwick, has become the ninth have been a focus of attention for decades. UK-based mathematician to win the pres- Professor Terry Lyons, FRS, President of the tigious Fields Medal over its 80 year history. London Mathematical Society, commented, The medal recipients were announced on ‘We are all very excited that Martin Hairer’s Wednesday 13 August in a ceremony at the incredible and ground shaping achieve- four-yearly International Congress for Math- ments have been recognised by the inter- ematicians, which on this occasion was held national community through the award of in Seoul, South Korea. a Fields Medal. The Fields Medal has, for The President of South Korea, Geun-hye many years, been recognised as being at the Park, was present for the announcements highest level; the Nobel Prize for mathemat- and presented Professor Hairer with the ics. As a result of Martin Hairer’s spectacular medal. The Fields Medal has an equivalent work and precise definitions, a new field is standing within mathematics as the Nobel effectively opened up and validated through Prize has within other areas of science and is a range of deep, distinctive, and challenging awarded every four years to at most four of applications. In addition to his great science, the most outstanding mathematicians under Martin Hairer is a major contributor to the 40 years of age at the beginning of the year. wider mathematical community. On behalf Martin Hairer works in an area of math- of the LMS, I congratulate Martin and I am 4 ematics known as stochastic analysis; it confident this congratulatory message is provides conceptual and computational shared across the whole UK community and toolkits for rigorously modelling the inter- beyond’. actions within high dimensional random Professor Hairer said that "The award of systems. a Fields Medal is of course an extraordi- A smouldering rag is a difficult system to nary recognition of the work in analysing think about mathematically. There is an singular stochastic partial differential interaction between highly non-uniform equations, which goes well beyond anything heat pattern, heat dependent and heat I ever dared to imagine. It also provides producing chemical reactions, and the recognition to this very broad interface ever changing state of the underlying rag between probability theory and analysis, as more of it turns to ash. It is an example sometimes collectively referred to as 'sto- of an important class of problems around chastic analysis', as a very active area of modelling randomly evolving interfaces. modern mathematics with a fascinating Although common in nature and important, range of deep open problems still waiting to they have challenged mathematicians for be explored. This is also an opportunity to decades. The combination of randomness, thank my wife Xue-Mei, my parents, and the singularity, and nonlinearity simply do not many friends and colleagues on both sides fit well together with existing mathematical of the Atlantic who provided continuous in- tools (eg partial differential equations). spiration, encouragement and support over Martin Hairer works on this interface the years". between probability theory and partial dif- Three other outstanding young mathema- ferential equations; and has created a body ticians also received the Fields Medal: of work that is widely recognised as having Maryam Mirzakhani (Stanford University) revolutionised an entire field of research. for her outstanding contributions to the Hairer was able to give, for the first time, dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces a rigorous intrinsic mathematical meaning and their moduli spaces and made history as to a number of different classes of random the first woman to win a Fields Medal. [email protected] No. 439 September 2014

Artur Avila (Centre National de la developing powerful new methods in the Recherche Scientifique) for his profound geometry of numbers, which he applied to contributions to dynamical systems theory, count rings of small rank and to bound the which have changed the face of the field, average rank of elliptic curves. using the powerful idea of renormalization A number of other prizes were awarded at as a unifying principle. the ceremony, details of which can be found Manjul Bhargava (Princeton University) for at http://www.mathunion.org/general/prizes.

LMS HONORARY MEMBERSHIP 2014

The London Mathemati- internationally. cal Society has elected Her work on permutation groups, and for Professor Donald example her 1983 proof, together with Peter Dawson, of Carleton Cameron, Jan Saxl and Gary Seitz of Sims’ University and McGill conjecture mentioned that there exists an University, and Professor integral function f such that for any finite Cheryl Praeger, of the primitive permutation group G, the order University of Western of a point stabilizer G_α is bounded above Australia, to Honorary by f(d), where d is the length of a non-trivial Membership of the orbit of G_α. Further key results in the theory Professor Donald Dawson Society. of group actions including her 1988 generali- 5 Donald Dawson has zation (with Martin Liebeck and Jan Saxl) of played a leading role in the development the O’Nan-Scott Theorem are outstanding. of probability as a tool connecting analysis She has made an especially significant con- with applications, and is particularly known tribution to the development of mathemat- for his work on the class of measure valued ics in China, the Philippines, Iran and the Gulf processes now universally known as the Daw- States, and has been a role model for many son-Watanabe super-processes. mathematicians. These processes are solutions to nonlinear Full citations for Professor Dawson and stochastic partial differential equations and Professor Praeger will appear in the LMS have proved extraordinarily natural for Bulletin. modelling genetic diversity; they © Univ of Western Australia generalise to the continuum the concept of critical branching and break completely new ground mathematically. The 'solutions' are randomly evolving measures which, if the evolution is in a dimension greater than one, have no density to the usual volume element. Cheryl Praeger has made a leading contribution spanning many areas of pure mathemat- ics, particularly group theory, combinatorics and geometry, as well as serving the mathematical community both nationally and Professor Cheryl Praeger LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

LMS NEWSLETTER ONLINE

We are delighted to announce the launch The online Newsletter will be updated con- of our improved online LMS Newsletter tinuously and will also include the current (www.lms.ac.uk/newsletter) which we hope and past PDF issues available for download, you find informative and easy to use. The accessible at http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk/site/ layout has been completely redesigned with issue-select/. Anyone who wishes to stop simplicity, ease of use and a strong focus on receiving a paper copy can choose to receive content delivery in mind. Email newsletter@ instead an email alert at the beginning of lms.ac.uk if you experience any problems each publication month, containing a direct using the new website or if you have any link to the current PDF issue. To do so, email suggestions. [email protected].

HEA STEM STRATEGIC PROJECT

The Higher Education ematical Transitions report that was launched Academy (HEA) has at the Royal Society on 23 June 2014. published five disci- All of the reports can be accessed via the pline reports as outputs link www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/ from the HEA STEM stem-project-info. Direct links to individual 6 strategic project: Skills reports and the Mathematical Transitions in Mathematics and report are embedded in the website. Statistics in the Dis- Please note that the HEA website is ciplines and Tackling Transition. The disci- currently undergoing development. If you plines in question are: Chemistry, Geography, have problems accessing any of the reports Economics, Sociology and Business & Man- please email [email protected] to agement. These reports informed the Math- obtain assistance.

NEW INTERNATIONAL WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS WEBSITE In March 2013 the Executive Committee of ganizations, people, events, resources and the International Mathematical Union (IMU) initiatives of interest to women mathemati- approved the establishment of an Advisory cians world-wide. In order to maximize the Group for Women in Mathematics, charged usefulness of this site, suggestions from the with creating and overseeing a section of community are welcome. Indeed, advice the IMU website entitled Women in Math- concerning items for inclusion is important. ematics (WiM). Opportunities for women The Advisory Group may be contacted at vary widely from country to country and a [email protected]. main aim is to enhance the participation of The WiM Advisory Group: Ingrid Daube- women in all mathematical communities. chies (Chair) (USA), Petra Bonfert-Taylor The new WiM site will be launched at the (USA), Carla Cedarbaum (Germany), Nalini International Congress of Women Math- Joshi (Australia), Sunsook Noh (Korea), ematicians on 12 August 2014 just prior to Marie-Françoise Ouedraogo (Burkina the International Congress of Mathematics, Faso), Dušanka Perišić (Serbia), Claudia Sa- at the address www.mathunion.org/wim/ . gastizábal (Brazil), Caroline Series (UK), and The site includes information about or- Carol Wood (USA). [email protected] No. 439 September 2014

MATHEMATICS POLICY ROUND-UP

August 2014 the Royal Society, which is a product of a major programme of work over the past SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES two years, led by a committee chaired by Sir Martin Taylor, FRS’. A-level Content Advisory Board (ALCAB) The report sets out a roadmap for radically report transforming our education systems, with ALCAB has published the report from the particular focus on mathematics and science, Mathematics and Further Mathematics Panel over the next 20 years. and the correspondence to the DfE from the The report, which has been written by a chair of this panel, Professor Richard Craster. committee including scientists, education The report is available at http://tinyurl.com/ experts, teachers and a former Secretary of k8c9ncm. State for Education, also calls for: • the status of teaching to be raised and Subject content consultations increased support for the professionalism The Department for Education (DfE) of teachers through subject-specific pro- announced the publication, for consulta- fessional development, which should be a tion, of new subject content for a further requirement for career progression; set of GCSEs and A-levels, which will be first • rigorous new post-16 courses and qualifi- taught in 2016. Details of the publications cations in mathematics, science, engineer- are included below. The consultations will ing and technology to engage students 7 close on 19 September. who are studying arts and humanities The consultation documents are available subjects. at http://tinyurl.com/q94fv5g, level math- • new, independent, expert bodies in ematics subject content is available at http:// England and Wales to set curriculum; and tinyurl.com/qychltx and the GCE AS and assessment, providing stability, increasing A-level further mathematics subject content innovation and bringing to an end the is available at http://tinyurl.com/kvrnz2h. turmoil that teachers currently suffer as a Ofqual is also consulting on the recom- result of constant changes. mendations for assessment: Developing The full report is available at http://tinyurl. new GCSE, A level and AS qualifications for com/lgk9ml5. first teaching in .2016 More information is available at http://tinyurl.com/po2zlks. OTHER

Vision for Labour Green Paper on Science Policy science and ‘Labour will use a long-term plan for mathematics research funding to help create high-wage education jobs, ending uncertainty in science policy ‘All students created by the coalition’. This is the position should study set out by Labour in a Green Paper inviting science and views on the party’s mathematics science policy. until age 18 as The Green Paper is part of a new available at http://tinyurl. baccalaure- com/lf5z24h. ate according Dr John Johnston to a report Joint Promotion of published by Mathematics LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

LMS GRANT SCHEMES Joint Research Groups (Scheme 3) – Renewal procedure Next Closing Date for Research Grant ALL renewal applications MUST be accompa- Applications: 15 September 2014 nied by a Financial and Academic Report for Applications are invited for the following the previous year’s activities. Please note that grants: full reports should always be submitted (‘light touch’ refers to the application procedure Conferences (Scheme 1) only). Grant holders wishing to renew their Grants of up to £7,000 are available to application may use the Light Touch Applica- provide partial support for conferences held tion Form if the original or last full renewal in the United Kingdom. This includes a application was made in the last TWO years, maximum of £4,000 for principal speakers, and NONE of the following have changed: £2,000 to support the attendance of research • the grant holder students who are studying at universities in • the supporters, and the UK, and £1,000 to support the attend- • the amount requested.* ance of participants from Scheme 5 or former *Please note that with the increased Soviet Union countries. maximum awards, grant holders may still apply using the Light Touch scheme and Celebrating New Appointments (Scheme 1) request the increased award per meeting Grants of up to £600 are available to provide (£500), e.g. up to £2,000 for 4 meetings, partial support for meetings held in the provided that no other details have changed 8 United Kingdom to celebrate the new ap- and that the number of meetings has not pointment of a lecturer at a UK university. changed. Grant holders MUST use the Full Renewal Postgraduate Research Conferences Application Form if the original or last full (Scheme 8) renewal application was made THREE years Grants of up to £4,000 are available to provide ago, and/or ANY of the following have partial support for conferences held in the changed: United Kingdom, which are organised by and • the grant holder are for postgraduate research students. • the supporters or • the amount requested. Visits to the UK (Scheme 2) If a renewal application is unsuccessful, Grants of up to £1,500 are available to normally the grant will be terminated at the provide partial support for a visitor to the end of the calendar year. A supplementary UK, who will give lectures in at least three grant will be available to cover actual expend- separate institutions. Awards are made to the iture for a meeting held during the autumn host towards the travel, accommodation and term. This will normally be the equivalent of subsistence costs of the visitor. the grant awarded for one meeting, eg £500, and will not usually exceed one third of the Joint Research Groups (Scheme 3) previous year’s grant. Grants of up to £2,000 are available to provide support to research groups of mathematicians Research in Pairs (Scheme 4) to enable them to engage in collaborative Grants of up to £1,200 are available to support activities through holding regular meetings a visit for collaborative research either by the (the maximum award is for four meetings grant holder to another institution abroad, held in the academic year). Groups should be or by a named mathematician from abroad made up of mathematicians who are working to the home base of the grant holder. Grants in at least three different locations and who of up to £600 are available to support a visit have a common research interest. for collaborative research either by the grant [email protected] No. 439 September 2014 holder to another institution within the UK, The maximum award is £10,000, but a typical or by a named mathematician from within award is in the range of £3,000-£5,000. Appli- the UK to the home base of the grant holder. cations for partial support of workshops with other sources of support will be considered. International Short Visits (Scheme 5) Applications should normally be submitted Grants of up to £3,000 are available to 12 months in advance of the proposed support a visit for collaborative research by workshop. For further information visit: a named mathematician from a country in www.lms.ac.uk/content/research-workshops- Africa (or countries where mathematics is grants. in a similar position) to the home base of the grant holder. Grants of up to £2,000 are Young British and Russian Mathematicians available to support a visit for collaborative Scheme research by the grant holder to a country in Next Deadline: 15 September 2014. Africa (or countries where mathematics is in a similar position). Visits to Russia For full details of these grant schemes, and Applications are invited from young British to download application forms, please visit postdoctoral mathematicians who wish to the LMS website: www.lms.ac.uk/content/ spend a few weeks in Russia giving a series research-grants. of survey lectures on the work of their school. • Applications received by 15 September The LMS is offering grants of up to £500 to 2014 will be considered at a meeting in meet the travel costs, while the host should October. apply to the Russian Academy of Sciences for 9 • Applications should be submitted well in funding towards local expenses for accom- advance of the date of the event for which modation and subsistence. Please contact funding is requested. Sylvia Daly ([email protected]) for informa- • Normally grants are not made for events tion before contacting the Russian Academy which have already happened or where of Sciences for funding. Applications to the insufficient time has been allowed for LMS should include the following: processing of the application. • A brief academic case for the visit, includ- Queries regarding applications can be ing a description of your current research addressed to the Grants Administrators or the interests, and an outline of your planned Programme Secretary (see below) who will be work during the visit (no more than one pleased to discuss proposals informally with side of A4). potential applicants and give advice on the • A brief CV (no more than one side of A4). submission of an application. • A brief budget. • Grants Administrators: Sylvia Daly and • A letter of invitation from the head of the Elizabeth Fisher (tel: 020 7291 9971/3, host department in Russia, which must email: [email protected]). state explicitly that your accommodation • Programme Secretary: Rob Wilson and subsistence expenses will be met by ([email protected]). them. This should include provisional dates for the visit. OTHER LMS GRANTS AND FUNDING Financial and academic reports will be required after the visit. In exceptional cir- Research Workshop Grants cumstances, applications may be considered The Society offers grants to support Research from strong research students who are close Workshops held in the UK. Requests for to finishing their doctorates. Applications support (for travel and subsistence of par- should include a strong case and the student ticipants, and reasonable associated costs) in should obtain a letter of recommendation the range £1,000-£10,000 will be considered. from his/her supervisor. LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

Visits to Britain Grace Chisholm Young Fellowship Under this Scheme, applications may also The Society offers two fellowships of £1,000 be made by any mathematician in Britain (consisting of £500 personal support and wishing to host a visit by a young Russian £500 contribution to a host institution) each postdoctoral mathematician who wishes year to mathematicians who need support to spend a few weeks in Britain giving a when their mathematical career is inter- series of survey lectures on the work of rupted by family responsibilities, relocation their Russian seminar. The LMS is offering of partner, or other similar circumstance. grants to the host institution to meet the These fellowships, named after Grace visitor’s actual travel and accommodation Chisholm Young, aim to provide some costs of up to £1,500. Applications should support, making possible some continu- include the following: ous mathematical activity, so enabling the • Name and brief CV of the visitor fellow to be in a position to apply for posts • A brief budget when circumstances allow. The Fellowship • A brief description of the course of will give an endorsement of the holder's lectures status as a mathematician, so that the break • A letter or email of agreement from in formal employment should not prevent the head of the host department, in- them from resuming a career as a math- cluding the proposed dates of the visit. ematician at a later stage. Please see the Financial and academic reports will be website for further details: www.lms.ac.uk/ required after the visit. grants/grace-chisholm-young-fellowships. 10 Further details of the Scheme can be found on the LMS website: www.lms. Small Grants for Education ac.uk/content/international-grants. Ap- Next Deadline: 30 November 2014 plications received by 15 September Funding for grants up to £800 is available 2014 will be considered at a meeting in to stimulate interest and enable involve- October. Enquiries should be made to the ment in mathematics from Key Stage 1 Grants Administrators: Sylvia Daly and (age 5+) to Postgraduate level and beyond. Elizabeth Fisher (tel: 020 7291 9971/3, Anyone working/based in the UK is eligible email: [email protected]). to apply for a grant. If the applicant is not a member then the application must be coun- Spitalfields Days tersigned by an LMS member or another Next Deadline: 15 September 2014 suitable person such as a Head teacher or Grants of up to £1,000 are available to senior colleague. Please see the website support an LMS Spitalfields Day, which for further details: www.lms.ac.uk/content/ have been run since 1987 and are in small-grants-education. honour of the Society’s predecessor, the Spitalfields Mathematical Society (1717- Computer Science Small Grants (Scheme 7) 1845). A Spitalfields Day is a one-day Next Deadline: 15 November 2014 meeting, which is usually associated with Funding for grants up to £500 is available to a long-term symposium on a specialist support a visit for collaborative research at topic at a UK university. Selected partici- the interface of Mathematics and Computer pants, often distinguished experts from Science either by the grant holder to another overseas, give survey lectures (or other institution within the UK or abroad, or by a types of lecture accessible to a general named mathematician from within the UK mathematical audience) on topics in the or abroad to the home base of the grant field of the symposium. Please see the holder. Please see the website for further website for further details: www.lms. details: www.lms.ac.uk/content/computer- ac.uk/content/spitalfields-days. science-small-grants-scheme-7. [email protected] No. 439 September 2014

Childcare Supplementary Grants by childcare costs. Institutions are expected Grants of up to £200 are available to parents to make provision for childcare costs and working in mathematics to help with the cost parents are encouraged to make enquiries. of childcare when attending a conference However, where this is not available, the or research meeting. The Society believes Society administers a Childcare Supplemen- that all parents working in mathematics tary Grants Scheme. Please see the website should be able to attend conferences and for further details: www.lms.ac.uk/content/ research meetings without being hindered childcare-supplementary-grants.

LMS ELECTIONS 2014

Members will recall that in 2012 and 2013, to receive email correspondence from the the Society introduced an e-voting option LMS will receive all communications in for elections to Council and Nominating paper format, both from the Society and Committee. In both years the turn out from the ERS. in the elections were considerably higher The Society will also host an Elections than for years where voting was paper only. Blog on the LMS website for use by candi- In 2013 almost three quarters of votes cast dates and members. were online. All members who are regis- It is hoped as many members as possible tered for electronic contact and who are will vote in the 2014 LMS Elections. Results eligible to vote will receive an email with will be announced at the Society’s AGM to 11 instructions on how to vote, paper copies be held on Friday 14 November 2014. will not now be sent automatically to those so registered. However paper copies Ensure that your details are current can still be requested. Members eligible to vote who are not registered for electronic All members are strongly encouraged to communication will be sent a paper copy, ensure that their email and postal contact though such members are encouraged to details registered with the Society are up- vote online. to-date to enable the election process to Members are asked to regularly check run smoothly. Members may now elec- their post/email in October for communi- tronically update their personal contact cations regarding the elections from the details on the members’ section of the Electoral Reform Society. LMS website and all members are encour- Prior to this, a communication will be aged to use this facility. Any changes to sent by the Society to all members who are personal details would be required no registered for electronic communication later than 16 September 2014 for election informing them that they can expect to purposes. shortly receive some election correspond- Fiona Nixon ence from the ERS. Those not registered Executive Secretary

COLLINGWOOD MEMORIAL PRIZE

The 2014 Collingwood Memorial Prize has FRS, President of the Society 1969-1970, been awarded to Kate Mackintosh Vokes, is awarded to a final-year mathematics St Mary's College, Durham University. The student at the University of Durham who Collingwood Memorial Prize, established intends to continue to a higher degree in in memory of Sir Edward Collingwood mathematics. LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

LONDON MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY POPULAR LECTURES 2014 University of Birmingham – Wednesday 24 September

Professor Kevin Buzzard Imperial College London What’s in a number?

Much of our work and our leisure interests are now stored in digital format -- i.e., as numbers. This has weird conse- quences: for example some numbers are now copyrighted, and other numbers are illegal. 12 Professor Buzzard will explain some of these stories, and also what happens if one tries to digitise mathematics itself.

Dr Julia Gog University of Cambridge Epidemics and viruses: the mathematics of disease

Dr Gog will look at how mathematics has been applied to help understand and control infectious diseases, from the scale of a single virus particle through to a global influenza pandemic, and considers some mathematical challenges for the future.

Commences at 6.30 pm, refreshments at 7.30 pm, ends at 9.00 pm. Admission is free, with ticket. Register by Thursday 18 September. To register for tickets, please email [email protected] or visit the LMS website for abstracts and a registration form (www.lms.ac.uk/events/popular-lectures). [email protected] No. 439 September 2014

OPEN HOUSE 2014 until 4 pm. Visitors will be given a tour of the building and there will be a presenta- The LMS will again open its doors to the tion on mathematics through the years. public as part of this year’s Open House Over 300 people visited the building in London event. De Morgan House will be 2013; we hope to continue this success in open on Sunday 21 September from 11 am 2014.

LMS COUNCIL DIARY which might not always be available. He concluded by saying that the Society was 4 July 2014 coming to the crunch: either more money A personal view would have to be raised from other direc- The routine formal business of minutes etc. tions, or we would have to concentrate our over, the President reported that he had minds on which activities should be continued recently represented the CMS on a Parlia- into the future. Thinking about prioritising mentary Links Day panel on the theme of will be on the agenda at next year’s Council ‘Establishing Trust in Science’. This had retreat. been a welcome opportunity to raise the Council had a presentation from Diana profile of mathematics. From the meeting Garnham, Chief Executive of the Science of European Mathematical Society’s council Council. She described the Science Council in San Sebastián, which he had attended as an umbrella group for professional bodies together with three other Council members, and learned societies within science. The 13 he reported that the low level of Brussels Science Council was established in 2003 as funding for mathematics was judged to a reaction to criticisms from government reflect a lack of applications. Among other about the functioning of some professional events he had attended on behalf of the societies. They were perceived as anachronis- Society was the ceremony in Oslo where the tic, with narrow interests and poor govern- Abel Prize was awarded to Yakov Sinai. ance, and did not see themselves as serving Much of the work of Council follows regular the public interest. On the other hand there cycles. At this meeting we considered income was a lack of understanding in government and expenditure for the third quarter, both about what learned societies did. Her view of which were on target, the budget for was that there was more recognition within 2014–15, and also planning figures up to Parliament of the importance of science than 2019. Treasurer Rob Curtis explained that was generally believed. Often quoted figures we were budgeting for a deficit next year on the number of MPs with a science back- because of the increased activity associated ground only counted those with PhDs. But with the 150th anniversary, but we planned those with an undergraduate science degree to return to a balanced budget very soon amounted to around 20% of MPs, which is after. The Treasurer reminded Council that about the same as for Law. there is extra uncertainty beyond 2016 due After an earlier than usual finish, a short to the expiry of the main journal contract walk in the sunshine — tendering for the new contract is already took us to the premises under way and will be completed in 2015. of the British Medical As- Moreover the Postdoctoral Mobility Grants sociation for an excellent were, on current plans, to cease in 2017, General Meeting at which likewise the Undergraduate Research Hardy Lecturer Percy Deift Bursaries, previously funded by Nuffield, will and Nina Snaith were the not continue beyond 2015. In addition, the speakers. Research Schools involved shared funding Francis Clarke LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

The Chair of Mathematics

Ref: 008790 Salary: Professor, Negotiable Closing date: 30 September 2014

The University of Glasgow, established in 1451, is a member of the UK's Russell Group of leading universities. The University is committed to enhancing its position as one of the world's great broad-based research-intensive universities. Central to our strategic development plan, 'Glasgow 2020: A Global Vision', the School of Mathematics and Statistics will make a key appointment to The Chair of Mathematics. The successful applicant will provide leadership in the research, teaching and management of the School. He or she will develop and lead a world- leading research programme in Pure Mathematics that complements our existing 14 research in Algebra, Analysis, and Geometry & Topology, and will teach at all undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

The holder of this prestigious chair founded in 1691 will be an outstanding internationally-leading researcher, taking on national and international leadership roles, with a strong record of applying for and securing research funding and high impact publications in internationally recognised journals.

Apply online at www.glasgow.ac.uk/jobs and search for reference number 008790.

Informal enquiries may be directed to the Head of School

Professor Adrian Bowman + 44 141 330 2975 [email protected]

or to the Head of Mathematics

Professor Ian Strachan + 44 141 330 2479 [email protected]

Information about the School, and all its research groups, is available from the School website www.gla.ac.uk/schools/mathematicsstatistics/

The University is committed to equality of opportunity in employment. The University of Glasgow, charity number SC004401. [email protected] No. 439 September 2014

LMS SOCIETY MEETING MATHEMATICS AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR Saturday 6 September 2014 De Morgan House, 57-58 Russell Square, London WC1B 4HS

15

10:00 Coffee and Registration 3:00 Deborah Kent (Drake University) 10:30 Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze (Agder) Developing a theory of ballistics from German and Austrian mathematical experimentation and mathematics: efforts during the First World War O. Veblen, F.R. Moulton, and the Aberdeen Proving Ground Project 11:30 David Aubin (Paris) The Total War of Paris Mathematicians 3:45 Tea 12:15 June Barrow-Green (Open University) 4:15 Joseph Dauben (CUNY) What did Cambridge mathematicians The international diplomacy of G.H. do during the First World War? Hardy 1:00 Lunch 5:15 Close of meeting. Wine Reception 2:15 Rossana Tazzioli (Lille) 7:00 Society Dinner The reaction of Italian mathematicians to the entrance of Italy in the First World War

To register contact Elizabeth Fisher ([email protected]) by Monday 1 September. Late registrations for places may still be accepted, subject to availability. The reception will be followed by a dinner at venue (tbc), at a cost (tbc) per person, inclusive of wine. If you would like to attend the dinner, please contact Elizabeth Fisher (lmsmeet [email protected]) by Monday 1 September. There are limited funds available to contribute in part to the expenses of members of the Society or research students to attend the meeting. Please contact Elizabeth Fisher (lms [email protected]) for further information. LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

EUROPEAN NEWS books and journals and financial support for the transport. Books are preferred to journals. EMS council elects new officers One of the recent and successful initiatives At its meeting on 28 of the committee is the creation of the label June 2014, the council Emerging Regional Centres of Excellence of the EMS elected (ERCE). This label recognizes the important role three officers who will played by the awarded institution in education take over at the very at the Master level in its region. By now, three beginning of 2015. centres have been awarded the ERCE label: • EMS President: the Abdus Salam School of Mathematical Pavel Exner, Academy Sciences (ASSMS) in Pakistan (2011), the Centro of Sciences of the de Investigación en Matemáticas (CIMAT) in Czech Republic Mexico (2013), and the Vietnam Institute for • Secretary: Sjoerd Advanced Studies in Mathematics (VIASM) in © J. Dolejší Verduyn Lunel, Utre- Vietnam (2013). In the last annual meeting of Pavel Exner (EMS President) cht University, The the committee in April 2014, two more centres Netherlands were recommended to be awarded the ERCE • Treasurer: Mats Gyllenberg, University of label. Helsinki, Finland The committee participated at the event Also Volker Mehrmann, TU Berlin, Germany, Mathematics in Emerging Nations: Achieve- was re-elected as member-at-large of the EMS ments and Opportunities (MENAO) in Seoul 16 executive committee. For full details see www. (Korea) just before the ICM. euro-math-soc.eu/. The committee provides some financial support for the travel expenses of young Changes to the EMS Website students from developing countries to par- The EMS website has recently been updated. ticipate in training activities, to PhD students The new layout and appearance is designed to pursue studies in ERCE centres and to the to make the website work well on mobile and organization of some tablet devices, as well as providing much more workshops. The Chair of the inherent structure to the website's content. Committee is Michel Wald- For full details see www.euro-math-soc.eu/ schmidt. For more informa- news/14/06/28/changes-ems-website. tion see euro-math-soc.eu/ EMS-CDC/index.php. AMS-EMS-SPM International Meeting David Chillingworth The joint meeting of the American Mathemati- LMS/EMS Correspondent cal Society, the European Mathematical Society and the hosting Portuguese Mathematical EUROPEAN MATHEMATICAL Society will be held in the UNESCO world heritage city of Porto from 10 to 13 June 2015. SOCIETY For all details (including plenary speakers and Meeting of Council 27-28 June 2014 special sessions) see aep-math2015.spm.pt/ . Report Committee for Developing Countries The Council of the European Mathematical The book donation scheme, where documents Society meets every two years. The LMS sent a are collected and sent to libraries in countries full delegation to the recent Council, consisting where the documentation is either non-exist- of the President (Terry Lyons), the Programme ent or very limited, continues. One difficulty Secretary (Rob Wilson) and two Members at is the postage costs. The Committee for Devel- Large of Council (Colva Roney-Dougal and oping Countries (CDC) welcomes donations of Cathy Hobbs). [email protected] No. 439 September 2014

The meeting was held over a weekend vidual members of the EMS. It supports the in the elegant surroundings of the Carlos work of the EMS Committee for Develop- Santa Maria Center, University of the ing Countries through providing two years’ Basque Country, San Sebastián, Spain. The free access to mathematicians in developing out-going President of the EMS, Marta countries, and through reviewers donating Sanz-Solé chaired the meeting very effec- their honorariums to the CDC’s work. tively, ensuring that all presentations kept to The EMS Applied Mathematics Committee time but that discussion could flourish. Chief reported on the EMS summer school items of business included preparations for programme in applied maths (ESSAM) which the next European Congress of Mathemat- provides wide-ranging opportunities for ear- ics, to be held in Berlin, July 2016, and the ly-career researchers. election of a new President for the EMS as A very informative presentation was given well as two other Officers. Pavel Exner, Sci- by Jean-Pierre Bourguignon from his per- entific Director of the Doppler Institute for spective as the current President of the Mathematical Physics and Applied Math- European Research Council. He noted that ematics in Prague was elected as the new only 2% of ERC grants go to mathematicians, President. Our own Stephen Huggett retired though by proportion of eligible applicants as Secretary of the EMS after several years mathematicians make up about 6%. This is of excellent service to the EMS. Marta, chiefly due to the number of grants awarded Stephen and the out-going Treasurer Jouko in an area being proportional to the number Väänänen were thanked heartily for the of applications received. Mathematicians work they have done. need to submit more ERC grant applications! 17 Items of particular interest on the agenda Overall the impression was of a flourishing included a report from the Editor of Zen- EMS, which encourages contribution from all tralBlatt MATH, the longest running ab- areas of mathematics and across the widest stracting and reviewing service. ZbMATH remit of what can be considered as Europe. has a new web interface and is free to indi- Cathy Hobbs

© EMS

EMS Council Meeting attendees LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

RECORDS OF PROCEEDINGS AT LMS MEETINGS JOINT ORDINARY MEETING WITH THE ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY

held on 16 April 2014 at Blackett Lecture Theatre, Imperial College London, as part of a joint meeting with the Royal Meteorological Society. Over 70 members and visitors were present for all or part of the meeting. The meeting began at 2.00 pm with the President of the London Mathemati- cal Society, Professor Terry Lyons FRS, in the Chair. No London Mathematical Society members were elected to membership. Three London Mathematical Society members signed the book and were admitted to the Society. Professor Lyons introduced a lecture given by Professor Chris Jones on Models 18 come in all shapes and sizes. The second lecture was given by Professor Ian Roulstone on Mathematics and modelling the carbon cycle. Before tea, the Chair introduced Professor Chris Budd on Adaptive mesh methods for data assimilation. After tea, Professor Lyons expressed the thanks of the Society to the speakers for giving wonderful lectures and also expressed thanks to Ian Roulstone for organising the meeting. Professor Lyons then handed over the Chair to the President of the Royal Meteorological Society, Professor Brian Golding, OBE. Professor Golding introduced the fourth lecture by Professor Ted Shepherd on The role of mathematics in understanding the atmospheric circulation response to climate change. The fifth lecture was given by Dr John Taylor on Mathematical models of phytoplankton blooms. The Chair then introduced Dr Emily Shuckburgh on The application of scien- tific evidence in climate-related policy. Professor Golding expressed the thanks of both societies to the speakers for giving wonderful lectures and also expressed thanks to Ian Roulstone for or- ganising the meeting. [email protected] No. 439 September 2014

RECORDS OF PROCEEDINGS AT LMS MEETINGS ORDINARY MEETING

held on 16 June 2014 at Loughborough University, as part of the Midlands Regional Meeting and Workshop on Scattering Theory & Wave Equations. Over 35 members and visitors were present for all or part of the meeting.

The meeting began at 2.00 pm with the Programme Secretary, Professor Robert Wilson, in the Chair.

Eleven members were elected to Ordinary membership: Michael Butler, Victorita Dolean Maini, Derek Harland, Michael Idowu, Mohammad Mahdi Jalali, Mohammad Reza Jalali, Henrik Jensen, Andras Juhasz, Barnaby Martin, Daniel Paulusma and John Prendergast.

Three members were elected to Associate membership: Joanna Hutchinson, 19 Zia Ullah Khan and Martin Ruben.

There were no members elected to Reciprocity membership.

Six members signed the book and were admitted to the Society.

Professor Wilson then handed over to Alexander Strohmaier who intro- duced a lecture given by Professor Werner Müller on Scattering theory and automorphic forms.

A second lecture was given by Professor Gigliola Staffilani on Dispersive PDE: Deterministic and probabilistic approaches.

After tea, the final lecture was given by Professor Alexander Pushnitski on Spectral Theory of Schrödinger and Hankel operators: analogies and differ- ences.

The Chair expressed the thanks of the Society to the speakers for giving excellent lectures.

The Chair also expressed thanks to Claudia Garetto, Eugenie Hunsicker and Alex Strohmaier for organising a successful meeting. LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

MIDLANDS REGIONAL with dinner at Burleigh Court restaurant where we were joined by the LMS Member- MEETING 2014 ship and Activities Officer, Elizabeth Fisher. Report The topics of the talks of the workshop on the following two days ranged from spectral The 2014 LMS Midlands Regional Meeting was theory, with an emphasis on scattering held at Loughborough University on Monday theory, to harmonic analysis and PDEs with 16 June. It was followed by the workshop various forms of the wave equations. In order Scattering Theory and Wave Equations from of appearance, the speakers were: Beatrice 17 to 18 June. Both events were organised Pelloni (Reading), Pieter Blue (Edinburgh), by Claudia Garetto, Eugenie Hunsicker and myself, Michael Levitin (Reading), Michael Alexander Strohmaier, all from Loughbor- Ruzhansky (Imperial), Mirko Tarulli (Pisa), ough University. The meeting began with Nicola Visciglia (Pisa), Vesselin Petkov an introduction by the LMS Programme (Bordeaux), Luc Nguyen (Oxford), Aram Kara- Secretary, Professor Robert Wilson (Queen khanyan (Edinburgh). It remains for me to Mary University of London). A list of new thank Claudia, Eugenie and Alex for organis- members were presented to the audience ing a very stimulating event with the partici- and any members at the meeting who had pation of many experts in various domains of not signed the prestigious membership book analysis; it was a great opportunity to learn before were invited to do so. and discuss mathematics. Eugenie then introduced the first speaker Veronique Fischer 20 of the afternoon, Werner Müller (Bonn), who Imperial College London spoke on Scattering Theory and Automorphic Forms. The purpose of this talk was to discuss LMS POPULAR some aspects of the theory of automorphic forms relating to spectral theory, number LECTURES 2014 theory and harmonic analysis. Report The second talk, given by Gigliola Staffilani (MIT) was on Dispersive PDE: Deterministic and On 9 July 2014 at the Institute of Education in Probabilistic Approaches. The talk presented London, for the first of the 2014 LMS Popular the study of the periodic semi-linear Cauchy Lectures, an audience of over 300 people, problem from several viewpoints: Fourier and including many students, enjoyed an evening harmonic analysis, analytic number theory, probability, dynamical systems and symplectic geometry. The final talk of the meeting, Spectral Theory of Schrödinger and Hankel Operators: Analogies and Differences, was given by Alexander Pushnitski (King’s College London), who marked the occasion by signing the prestigious membership book (after many years of unsigned membership). Alexander succeeded in presenting an accessible – albeit precise – description of several spectral prop- erties of various operators to a quite diverse group of mathematicians. This was appreci- ated by experts and non-specialists alike. After a wine reception in the Department Kevin Buzzard and Alice Rogers of Mathematical Sciences, the meeting ended (Chair of the LMS Education Committee) [email protected] No. 439 September 2014

players, jpegs, emails and e-books. He described how digital communica- tion works through the use of codes like ASCII to store text, photographs, movies, etc. as very large numbers for ease of electronic communication. He went on to show the importance of big numbers for copyright and how DVD encryption can lead to illegal prime numbers. In his individual, quirky style, Kevin led us through a discussion of how very basic pure mathematics with Julia Gog (University of Cambridge) ideas from early natural philosophers has led to the most modern ideas in of mathematics with topics ranging from applied mathematics. prime numbers to the flu virus. After the break, Dr Julia Gog from the Professor Kevin Buzzard, from Imperial University of Cambridge introduced a very College London, introduced us to the uses of modern discipline in the form of math- pure mathematics with What’s in a number. ematical biology with her talk Epidemics He compared analogue communications and viruses: the mathematics of disease. e.g. vinyl records, photographs, letters and She started by explaining how a simple virus 21 books, with the digital versions e.g. mp3 transmits itself between cells in the human

Kevin Buzzard (Imperial College London) LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

body and went on to show that in order to control epidemics such as the 20th Century influenza pandemic in the USA, we need to be able to under- stand what’s happening before we can control it. Julia’s talk explained epidemic theory and how probability is used to model it. Using each member of the audience as an individual cell, she demon- strated in a practical way how

viruses flow. © T. Orponen The evening was extremely Julia Gog (University of Cambridge) enjoyable and informative. I’m sure everyone who attended appreciated how traditional mathemat- problems, in particular epidemics. ics is being used in the modern world and Diane Crann how the new discipline of mathemati- Clothworkers’ Fellow in Mathematics cal biology is being used to help solve old The Royal Institution 22 PROJECTION AND SLICING THEOREMS IN FRACTAL GEOMETRY Report

The meeting Projection and Slicing Theorems Marstrand's (a retired professor at Bristol) in Fractal Geometry took place from 17 to seminal papers on the behaviour of Hausdorff 18 July 2014 at the University of Bristol. dimension under orthogonal projection and The meeting marked 60 years since John intersection with hyperplanes. The aim of the meeting was to showcase how much research this has led to and the fact that it is still very much an ongoing subject of research. To this end the meeting featured both talks which gave a historical overview and talks on current research. While the original papers are very much in geometric measure theory the results are also important in the theory of dynamical systems, and probabilistic methods are also very important. In addition to the talks on these papers Geoffrey Grimmett gave an excellent

© T. Orponen lecture on a fundamental paper of

Károly Simon uses boxes of teabags to illustrate an argument about his with John Marstrand on percola- the projection of fractal percolation tion. [email protected] No. 439 September 2014

The survey talks were given by Francois Ledrappier, Kenneth Falconer and Pertti Mattila and gave details about connections to the geodesic flow, details of several subsequent results on projections and slicing, including digital sundials, and some recent outstand- ing progress using scenery flows (in particular work of Hochman and Shmerkin © T. Sahlsten inspired by previous work of Henna Koivusalo states Marstrand's Projection Thoerem Furstenberg). In the more spe- with some subsequent developments cialised talks we heard how Marstrand’s results combined with Ledrappi- to dynamical systems and fractal geometry er-Young theory from dynamical systems can (Tseng and Kempton) as well as some more be used to partially solve the long standing classical geometric measure theory (Kaufman, open question of the dimension of Weier- Maleva). strass’s function (Romanowska). There were John Marstrand himself was able to come in some significant breakthroughs on restrict- for a short period on Wednesday afternoon ed families of projections (Orponen). We and was able to talk with old colleagues and 23 had three talks about how stronger projec- friends including Kenneth Falconer, Geoffrey tion results can be obtained for randomly Grimmett, Pertti Mattila, John Shepherd- defined sets (Koivusalo, Rams, Simon) which son and Roy Davies. I think he was surprised included a demonstration with a box of tea and happy to see how much subsequent bags balanced on the speaker’s head. Finally research his papers have led to. Despite this there were more talks about applications work starting sixty years ago it would have been easy to have had a full week’s workshop of talks on related results. As well as the formal lectures there was plenty of time for informal discussion over tea and coffee and during the confer- ence dinner on the Thursday evening. Abstract for all the talks and slides for the talks given by data projector are available on the meeting webpage, www.maths.bris. ac.uk/~matmj/projections. html. The meeting was supported by an LMS Conference grant and the Heilbronn Institute © T. Sahlsten for Mathematics Research.

John Marstrand, Pertti Mattila, Kenneth Falconer Thomas Jordan and Roy Davies have a discussion during a tea break University of Bristol LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

SPECTRAL ANALYSIS AND DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS Report A conference on Spectral Analysis and Differ- was allowed in the coffee and lunch breaks for ential Equations was held in Cardiff University discussion. On the first day, there was also an from Thursday 15 to Saturday 17 May 2014, evening talk by one of Norrie's sons, Tim Everitt, which commemorated the life and work of who gave a fascinating portrayal of Norrie's re- W.N. (Norrie) Everitt. About 40 participants markable life outside mathematics. This was came from far and wide to pay tribute to followed by a wine reception. The conference Norrie; apart from the UK and European con- dinner was held in the ‘Casanova’ restaurant in tingents, there were some from Japan, Russia the centre of Cardiff on the second day. and the US. The focus of the meeting was on The invited speakers were Christer Bennewitz self-adjoint and non-self-adjoint operators as- (Lund), Malcolm Brown (Cardiff), Des Evans sociated with ordinary and partial differen- (Cardiff), Hubert Kalf (Munich), Lance Littlejohn tial equations, which were areas close to the (Baylor, Texas), Tomas Johansson (Linkoping interests of Norrie, and in which he made sig- and Aston), Heinz Langer (Vienna), Marco nificant contributions. The lectures covered a Marletta (Cardiff), Michael Plum (Karlsruhe), wide range of topics, including spectral inequal- Sasha Pushnitski (King's College, London), Karl ities (in particular, the HELP inequality and its Michael Schmidt (Cardiff), Christiane Tretter descendants), the Titchmarsh-Weyl m-function (Berne), Tomio Umeda (Hyogo, Japan), Ian and abstract analogues, inverse problems, the Wood (Canterbury). Another invited speaker, 24 Camassa-Holm equation, exceptional orthogo- Andrey Shkalikov (Moscow), was unable to nal polynomials, spectral properties and the obtain a UK visa in time to attend. non-existence of zero modes of Dirac operators, We thank the LMS, The Cardiff University and computer assisted proofs. The programme School of Mathematics and WIMCS for their was full, with lectures from 10.00 until 17.30 on financial support. each of the first two days, and from 10.00 until Malcolm Brown and Des Evans 16.30 on the third day. However ample time Cardiff University

© Lance Littlejohn

Attendees [email protected] No. 439 September 2014

REPRESENTATIONS OF HECKE ALGEBRAS Report A workshop on Representations of Symmetric students. It is clear that the interest in repre- Groups, Hecke Algebras and KLR Algebras sentations of Hecke and KLR algebras is on was held at the University of Birmingham the increase in the UK, especially among the from 14 to 16 July 2014. This area of research younger generation of mathematicians. It is contains a number of classical open problems, reasonable to hope that the workshop will help such as that of finding the dimensions of inspire exciting future research in the area. simple modules for symmetric groups or, The workshop took place in a friendly and more generally, the so-called decomposition relaxed atmosphere. A number of speakers numbers. Approximately half of the talks were questioned vigorously on their talks by featured Khovanov–Lauda–Rouquier algebras, interested participants long after the talks had which were discovered just five years ago and finished. The regular coffee breaks provided have since generated a lot of interest from many opportunities for informal discussion several different perspectives, not least due to and for building professional contacts. So did applications to open problems of this nature. the conference dinner held in the city centre on The workshop provided the participants with Tuesday evening. an excellent survey of the most recent research The invited speakers were Christine Bessen- on KLR algebras and their representations. rodt (Leibniz Universität Hannover), Joseph A broad range of other topics was covered, Chuang (City University London), Matthew including representations of Cherednik Fayers (Queen Mary University of London), 25 algebras, use of Hecke algebras to construct Nicolas Jacon (Université de Reims Cham- knot invariants, and problems on represen- pagne-Ardenne), Alexander Kleshchev (Univer- tations of symmetric groups in characteristic sity of Oregon), Sinéad Lyle (University of East zero, such as those on plethysm. Several talks Anglia), Ivan Marin (Université de Picardie Jules featured interesting combinatorial construc- Verne), Andrew Mathas (University of Sydney), tions, which were clearly illustrated by the Vanessa Miemietz (University of East Anglia), speakers through well-prepared diagrams Eric Vasserot (Université de Paris 7), and Mark (notwithstanding occasional technical issues Wildon (Royal Holloway, University of London). with the data projector). The workshop was organised by David Craven In total, there were 13 talks, two of which and Anton Evseev. were given by PhD students. The speakers The organisers thank the LMS and the Anglo- included several internationally renowned Franco-German representation theory network experts in the area. Among the 33 participants for financial support. there were many mathematicians at early Anton Evseev stages of their careers, including 11 research University of Birmingham

© Anton Evseev © Anton Evseev

Alexander Kleshchev (University of Oregon) Vanessa Miemietz (University of East Anglia) LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

BIANCHI AND SIEGEL MODULAR FORMS Report A workshop on Bianchi and Siegel Modular cussion session and extended breaks to allow Forms was held at the School of Mathematics plenty of time for discussions and an informal & Statistics at the University of Sheffield from exchange of information between the partici- 14 to 16 July 2014 supported by an LMS Confer- pants. ence grant. Haluk Şengün (Sheffield) and Abhishek Saha Following great progress in automorphic (Bristol) gave introductory talks on Bianchi and forms over totally real fields, there has recently Siegel modular forms, respectively. Abhishek been renewed interest in the case of automor- highlighted particularly Böcherer's conjec- phic forms over imaginary quadratic fields (aka ture and its generalisations in terms of Bessel Bianchi modular forms). One way to study their periods, a topic that was to come up in several arithmetic properties is to lift them to Siegel other talks and discussions. Another “theme” modular forms via the theta correspondence was the Paramodular conjecture of Brumer- between O(3,1) and Sp(4). Kramer, which was discussed in talks by Jolanta This workshop brought together experts on Marzec (Bristol) on Non-vanishing of funda- automorphic forms, Galois representations and mental Fourier coefficients of Siegel modular computational number theory to present their forms and Lassina Dembélé (Warwick) on Theta work on different aspects of Bianchi and Siegel lifts of Bianchi modular forms and application modular forms and the connections between to paramodularity. Ameya Pitale (Oklahoma) 26 them. There were a total of 26 participants presented a talk on Local and global Maass from institutions in the UK (19), US (4) and one relations which included a (very convinc- each from France, Germany and Ireland. The ing!) sales pitch for representation theoretic schedule included 13 talks, a dedicated dis- methods.

© Tobias Berger

Neil Dummigan (Sheffield) Langlands functoriality and Harder's conjecture [email protected] No. 439 September 2014

All speakers had been asked to make sure that at least part of their talks was accessible to the eight PhD students attending. To help the students get the most out of the workshop and introduce them- selves to the other participants they were also given the opportunity for short presentations early on in the programme. Like the other talks these led to further conversations and discussions over coffee and lunch breaks in the common room. A highlight of the workshop was the discussion session at the end of © Tobias Berger the second day in which the PhD students were encouraged to ask Alexander Rahm (Galway) Bianchi modular forms of varying discriminant, level and weight questions. ‘Volunteers’ had to be chosen for the first questions, but soon this Thanasis Bouganis’ (Durham) presentation On turned into a very open exchange between special values of L-functions attached to half- all the participants which provided further integral weight Siegel modular forms. The explanations on topics of the workshop and relationship between L-values and congru- 27 generated some new research ideas. ences of automorphic forms featured strongly On the second day Alexander Rahm (Galway) in the talks by Neil Dummigan (Sheffield) on explained how to compute Bianchi modular Langlands functoriality and Harder’s conjec- forms of varying discriminant, level and ture, Siegfried Böcherer (Mannheim) on Con- weight and reported on progress in publish- gruence primes via higher L-functions and ing these results as part of www.lmfdb.org. Jim Brown (Clemson) on The Ikeda ideal and Lynne Walling (Bristol) presented recent results a conjecture of Katsurada. To complete the on Diagonalising spaces of Siegel Eisenstein overview of themes of the workshop, Galois series of general genus and for arbitrary levels. representations associated to both Bianchi and The arithmetic of L-values played a more or Siegel modular forms were discussed in the less explicit role in many talks, for example in presentations of H. Şengün, Kris Klosin (CUNY) on Congruences and R=T theorems and Jacques Tilouine (Paris) on Big Image of Galois representations and congruence ideals. The latter talk brought the friendly and informal meeting to a close. Many participants commented that the focus of the workshop on these particular automorphic forms was very useful and allowed them to develop new ideas and contacts. The organizer gratefully acknowl- edges financial support for this event by the LMS and EPSRC. © Tobias Berger Tobias Berger Audience University of Sheffield LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

THE UK’S EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY

The University of Kent is one of the UK’s most dynamic universities, demonstrated by our strong European and international presence, our excellent research and the quality of our teaching and student experience. Kent was ranked 24th in the UK for world-leading research in the most recent RAE, a top 20 university in the 2015 Guardian University 28 Guide and achieved a 90% satisfaction rate in the 2013 NSS. Head of School of Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science Ref: STM0494 Salary: Attractive salary based on Management & Professorial scale and Head of School Allowance Term: Full-time & ongoing professor, three-year term as Head of School with a possible further three-year term Kent is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2014/15 – can you help shape our future for the next 50 years and beyond? We require a high-calibre, inspirational leader to shape our School over the coming three years. A positive, experienced academic, with significant leadership experience, you will be seeking to progress your career with a highly successful, inspirational and growing school. You will fulfil the scholarly and research activities expected of a professor in one of the areas the School covers. Your substantive ongoing post as professor will continue after completion of your period as Head of School. Informal enquiries can be made to Professor Peter Clarkson on [email protected] For further information on the role and details on how to apply, please visit our website – www.kent.ac.uk/jobs Closing date: 13 October 2014 Interviews: 27 & 28 November 2014 [email protected] No. 439 September 2014

VISIT OF MAHYA Dr Ghandehari will be based at Lancaster University during her visit. Further details GHANDEHARI can be obtained from Yemon Choi (y.choi1@ Dr Mahya Ghandehari (Department of Pure lancaster.ac.uk). The visit is supported by an Mathematics, University of Waterloo, Canada) LMS Scheme 2 grant. will be visiting the UK in October 2014. Her interests lie in non-abelian harmonic analysis, VISIT OF ANDREW PUTMAN in particular the Fourier and Fourier-Stieltjes algebras of locally compact groups, and in Professor Andrew Putman will be visiting the geometric graph theory. Dr Ghandehari will UK from 6 to 17 October 2014. His expertise give lectures at: is in geometric group theory and low-dimen- • Newcastle University, 7 October sional topology, particularly in mapping class Induced representations, coefficient spac- groups of surfaces and related areas. During es, and applications to Fourier algebras his visit Professor Putman will give lectures as (contact Zinaida Lykova: Zinaida.Lykova@ follows: ncl.ac.uk) • Wednesday 8 October at 16:00, Math- • University of Oxford, 14 October ematics Building, University of Glasgow Derivations on the Fourier algebra of the (contact Tara Brendle: tara.brendle@ Heisenberg group glasgow.ac.uk) (contact Charles Batty: charles.batty@sjc. • Wednesday 15 October at 16:00, ox.ac.uk) Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Cam- • University of Birmingham, 15 October bridge University (contact Henry Wilton: 29 Derivations on the Fourier algebra of the [email protected]) Heisenberg group • Thursday 16 October at 15:00, Zeeman (contact Jonathan Bennett: j.bennett@ Building, Mathematics Institute, Univer- bham.ac.uk) sity of Warwick (contact Saul Schleimer: • Lancaster University, 22 October [email protected]) Geometric graph embeddings and graph For further details contact Tara Brendle limits ([email protected]). The visit is (contact Yemon Choi: [email protected]) supported by an LMS Scheme 2 grant.

CLUSTER ALGEBRAS AND PREPROJECTIVE ALGEBRAS

A workshop on Cluster Algebras and Preprojec- • Alastair King (Bath) tive Algebras will take place at the School of • Philipp Lampe (Bielefeld) Mathematics, Cardiff University from Friday 17 • Idun Reiten (Trondheim) to Saturday 18 October 2014. The purpose of this There is a £30 registration fee (£15 per day) workshop is to explore further the connections to cover coffee/tea and lunches. Funds are between cluster algebras, (higher rank) prepro- available to contribute to the expenses of jective algebras and some of the other applica- research students to attend the workshop. tions mentioned above such as quiver representa- For further details contact the organiser tions, Calabi-Yau algebras and categories, discrete ([email protected]). Further informa- integrable systems and tropical geometry. It aims tion and registration forms are available from to bring together experts in these fields from the the website at http://mathsevents.cf.ac.uk/clus UK and overseas. Speakers include: terworkshop. • Karin Baur (Graz) The meeting is supported by an LMS Confer- • Raf Bocklandt (Amsterdam) ence grant and by the Wales Institute of Math- • Anna Felikson (Durham) ematical and Computational Sciences. LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

Assistant Professor of Mathematics

→ The Department of Mathematics at ETH Zurich (www.math.ethz.ch) invites applications for an assistant professor position in mathematics (non-tenure track).

→ Candidates should hold a PhD or equivalent and have demonstrated the ability to carry out independent research work. Willingness to teach at all university levels and to participate in collaborative work within or outside 30 the school is expected. The new professor will be expected to teach undergraduate (in German or English) and graduate courses (in English) for students of mathematics, natural sciences and engineering.

→ Assistant professorships have been established to promote the careers of younger scientists. The initial appointment is for four years with the possibility of extension to six years.

→ Please apply online at www.facultyaffairs.ethz.ch

→ Applications should include a curriculum vitae, a list of publications, and a statement of future research and teaching interests. The letter of application should be addressed to the President of ETH Zurich, Prof. Dr. Ralph Eichler. The closing date for applications is 30 September 2014. ETH Zurich is an equal opportunity and family friendly employer and is further responsive to the needs of dual career couples. We specifically encourage women to apply. [email protected] No. 439 September 2014

CERME 9 CERME 9: WORKING

The Ninth Congress of European Research GROUP 14 in Mathematics Education (CERME) will take Research on university level mathematics place at the Charles University, Prague from 4 education is a relatively young field, which to 8 February 2015. The plenary talks will be embraces a growing range of theoretical ap- given by: proaches and research designs. Working Group • Jarmila Novotná (Faculty of Education, 14 (WG14) was launched at CERME7. After Charles University in Prague) Research in CERME8, its leader team – in collaboration teacher education and innovation at schools with WG14 participants and others – worked – Cooperation, competition or two separate towards a Research in Mathematics Education worlds? Special Issue (Institutional, sociocultural and • Carmen Batanero (Department of Math- discursive approaches to research in univer- ematics Education, Universidad de Granada) sity mathematics education, July 2014) which Understanding randomness: Challenges for focused on research that is conducted in the research and teaching spirit of the following theoretical frameworks: The thematic working groups are: the Anthropological Theory of the Didactic, • Argumentation and proof the Theory of Didactic Situations, Instrumental • Arithmetic and number systems and Documentational Approaches, Communi- • Algebraic thinking ties of Practice and Inquiry and the Theory of • Geometrical thinking Commognition. In CERME9 the Working Group • Probability and statistics education wish to cement and further this work but also 31 • Applications and modelling welcome contributions from across the board • Mathematical potential, creativity and of research approaches. talent • Affect and mathematical thinking Call for papers and poster proposals • Mathematics and language Research-based papers (maximum 10 pages) • Diversity and Mathematics Education: Social, and poster proposals (two pages) primarily on: cultural and political challenges • the teaching and learning of advanced • Comparative studies in Mathematics university mathematics topics; Education • mathematical reasoning and proof in uni- • History in Mathematics Education versity mathematics; • Early Years Mathematics • transition issues ‘at the entrance’ to univer- • University mathematics education sity mathematics, or beyond; • Teaching mathematics with resources and • challenges for, and novel approaches to, technology teaching mathematics at university level • Student's learning mathematics with re- (including the teaching of students in non- sources and technology mathematics degrees); • Theoretical perspectives and approaches in • the role of ICT tools (e.g. CAS) and other mathematics education research resources (e.g. textbooks, books and other • Mathematics teacher education and profes- materials) in the teaching and learning of sional development university mathematics; • Mathematics teaching practices and re- • assessing the learning and teaching of sources for teaching mathematics at university level; For further information about CERME 9 visit • the preparation and training of university the website at www.cerme9.org. mathematics teachers; Of particular relevance to the teaching and • collaborative research between university learning of mathematics at university level is mathematics teachers and researchers in Working Group 14. mathematics education; and, LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

• theoretical approaches to research into valuation. In particular, they are strongly linked the teaching and learning of university to number theory and arithmetic geometry. mathematics. They also form an interesting and important Papers and poster proposals should use the class of examples of spaces of nonpositive CERME word template, and conform to the curvature, and as such have implications also guidelines at www.cerme9.org/guidelines/ for geometric group theory. guidelines-for-authors/. Email your paper as a The meeting consists of a five lecture series WORD document and a PDF version to Elena on recent developments in Bruhat-Tits theory, Nardi ([email protected]), and at the same given by world-leading experts on the theory time to the conference secretariat (submis- of Bruhat-Tits buildings. The speakers are: [email protected]). Deadline for submission of • Linus Kramer (Münster) Metric aspects of papers is 15 September 2014. Euclidean buildings • Bernhard Mühlherr (Giessen) Descent in ANALYSIS DAY Bruhat-Tits buildings • Anne Parreau (Grenoble) Non discrete An LMS-WIMCS Analysis Day (third workshop Euclidean buildings and asymptotic cones of in the series) will take place at the Depart- symmetric spaces ment of Mathematics, Swansea University • Bertrand Rémy (Paris) Integral structures in on Thursday 25 September 2014 from 10:00 - Bruhat-Tits theory 17:30. The meeting, which is open to all, will • Guy Rousseau (Nancy) Images of line provide an opportunity to early career re- segments by retractions and application to 32 searchers in analysis, numerical methods and representation theory applications to present their recent results. The The organisers have limited support for speakers are: young researchers (in particular for UK based • Aurelio Arranz Carreno (Swansea) research students). The deadline for applying • Mikhail Cherdantsev (Cardiff) for support is 10 October 2014. For more • Jonathan Eckhardt (Cardiff/Vienna) information visit the website: www.jschil • Michael Nieves (Liverpool) lewaert.wix.com/bruhat-tits or contact the • Juan Reyes (Cardiff) organizers, Jeroen Schillewaert and Adam • Adam Vellender (Aberystwyth) Thomas by email ([email protected]). For further information visit the meeting The meeting is supported by an LMS Confer- webpage at http://math.swansea.ac.uk/staff/ ence grant and by Imperial College London. vm/WIMCS-LMS-2014/. There is no registra- tion fee associated with attending the event; CONTINUED FRACTIONS however those planning to attend are asked please to register by 22 September 2014, see AND GEOMETRY the meeting webpage for details. The meeting OF LATTICES is supported by an LMS Joint Research Groups in UK Scheme 3 grant and the Wales Institute A meeting on Continued Fractions and of Mathematical and Computational Sciences. Geometry of Lattices will take place in the De- partment of Mathematical Sciences at the Uni- BRUHAT-TITS BUILDINGS versity of Liverpool on Wednesday 8 October 2014. A winter meeting on Bruhat-Tits Buildings It is aimed to bring together researchers in- will be held at Imperial College London from terested in geometry of numbers. Tradition- Tuesday 6 to Friday 9 January 2015. Bruhat- ally a subject of number theory, continued Tits buildings can be viewed as a geometric fractions appear in dynamical systems, interpretation of semisimple linear algebraic algebraic geometry, topology, and even groups over fields with a non-Archimedean celestial mechanics. It is known that geometry [email protected] No. 439 September 2014 of continued fractions can be described in Introduction to DG-categories terms of lattice invariants. In the framework of For further information visit the website at: this conference we plan to discuss and develop www.cf.ac.uk/maths/subsites/logvinenko/2014- links between wrwsym/01-intro.html or contact one of the the lattice geometry and geometric aspects organisers: Miles Reid (Miles.Reid@warwick. of continued fractions. The meeting will cover ac.uk), Timothy Logvinenko (LogvinenkoT@ several applications to various questions of cardiff.ac.uk). Diophantine approximation, algebraic number There will be several related activities at theory, and toric geometry. The speakers are: Warwick immediately following the school: the • Imre Barany (University College London) workshop McKay correspondence, orbifolds, • Ian Short (Open University, Milton Keynes) quivers, 15-19 September 2014, organisers: • Radhakrishnan Nair (University of Liverpool) Alastair Craw (Bath), Timothy Logvinenko • Oleg Karpenkov (University of Liverpool) (Cardiff), Miles Reid (Warwick) and the first There are no registration fees. Some funding meeting of BrAG (British Algebraic Geometry), is available to contribute to the travel expenses 22-24 September 2014, organisers: Arend Bayer of research students. For more information (Edinburgh), Milena Hering (Edinburgh), Diane see the meeting website: http://pcwww.liv. Maclagan (Warwick) and Balázs Szendrői ac.uk/~karpenk/conference2014/cf2014.html, (Oxford). or contact Oleg Karpenkov (karpenk@liv. Some financial support is available for ac.uk). The meeting is supported by an LMS graduate students and early postdocs. The Conference grant under the Celebrating New school is supported by an LMS Conferences Appointments scheme and the Department grant and the University of Warwick. 33 of Mathematical Sciences of the University of Liverpool. VALEDICTION TO DERIVED CATEGORIES JEREMY GRAY A two-day meeting to mark Jeremy Gray's INTRODUCTORY SCHOOL retirement from the Open University and An Introductory School on Derived Categories celebrate his achievements will take place will take place at the University of Warwick from from 11 to 12 September 2014 at the Mercure Monday 8 to Friday 12 September 2014. This Parkside House, Woughton-on-the Green, school is aimed at a broad audience, including Milton Keynes. The speakers are: PhD students, early postdocs and specialists in • June Barrow-Green (Open University) neighbouring areas. It is the opening event • Umberto Bottazzini (University of Milan) of the 2014-2015 Warwick EPSRC symposium • Karine Chemla (University of Paris) Derived Categories and Applications, serving • Leo Corry (Tel Aviv University) as an introduction and an essential technical • Moritz Epple (University of Frankfurt) preparation. The school comprises three lecture • Jeremy Gray (Open University) courses, several stand-alone talks and a number • Nicolo Guicciardini (University of Bergamo) of exercise sessions. The invited speakers are • Snezana Lawrence (Bath Spa University) Dominic Joyce (Oxford) and Hiraku Nakajima • Jesper Lützen (University of Copenhagen) (RIMS). The mini-courses are: • Erhard Scholz (University of Wuppertal) • Tom Bridgeland (Sheffield) For further information see https://sites. Introduction to derived categories and google.com/site/grayvalediction/ or contact stability conditions June Barrow-Green (june.barrow-green@open. • Alexander Kuznetsov (Steklov Institute) ac.uk). The meeting is supported by an LMS Semiorthogonal decomposition of Conference grant, the British Society for the derived categories History of Mathematics and the International • Timothy Logvinenko (Cardiff) Commission on the History of Mathematics. LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

ENGINEERING AND CONTROL OF NATURAL AND SYNTHETIC MICROBIAL COMMUNITIES 26 - 28 November 2014 in association with the Newton Institute programme Understanding Microbial Communities; Function, Structure and Dynamics (11 August – 19 December 2014)

Workshop theme: The importance of microbial communities for health, industry and the natural environment cannot be overstated. Powerful new tools in molecular microbial ecology are being brought to bear on these systems in the anticipation of new technologies and treatments. However, our lack of theoretical understanding of their function, structure, and dynamics represents a strategically important lacuna in our knowledge. It is unlikely that we will ever be able rationally design very large and very complex natural or "synthetic" com- munities without an appropriate mathematical description of how they work. Thus, a better understanding of microbial communities will increase our ability to harness the power of the microbial communities in biotechnology and to manipulate such communities to promote health and well-being. 34 Closing date of the receipt of applications is 28 September 2014. Further information and application forms are available from the website at www.newton.ac.uk/programmes/UMC/umcw04.shtml

PERIODIC, ALMOST-PERIODIC, AND RANDOM OPERATORS Introductory School 5 – 16 January 2015 in association with the Newton Institute programme Periodic and Ergodic Spectral Problems (5 January -26 Jun 2015)

The winter school Periodic, Almost-periodic, and Random Operators opens the six month programme Periodic and Ergodic Spectral Problems. The aim of this winter school is to offer several mini-courses which will serve as an introduction to the subject matter of the semester programme. These mini-courses will present background information and an overview of the most important results and open questions in the areas of periodic, almost periodic, and random operators. The school is aimed at an audience primarily consisting of graduate students and recent PhD recipients. Attending these mini-courses will allow the participants to get a general feeling for the area and it will facilitate interactions with the experts that are present at the institute during the winter school and/or later parts of the programme period. It will also make the talks in the three subsequent workshops and various working groups more accessible to the junior participants. Closing date of the receipt of applications is 28 September 2014. Further information and application forms are available from the website at www.newton.ac.uk/programmes/PEP/pepw01 [email protected] No. 439 September 2014

In association with the Newton Institute programme Random Geometry (12 January - 3 July 2015)

INSTRUCTIONAL WORKSHOP FOR YOUNGER RESEARCHERS 12 - 23 January 2015

Background: The aim of this workshop is to provide introductory background on random geometry, that could serve participants during their stay for the Programme at Newton Institute. The workshop will consist of several courses, lasting roughly six to eight hours each, on the following topics: Gaussian Free Field, random planar maps, SLE, Gaussian multiplicative chaos, and discrete complex analysis. The level of the presentations will be mainly at the graduate and early post-doc level, but researchers at all levels of seniority 35 will be welcome. Closing date of the receipt of applications is 28 September 2014. Further information and application forms are available from the website www.newton.ac.uk/programmes/RGM/rgmw01

CONFORMALLY INVARIANT SCALING LIMITS 26 - 30 January 2015

Background: This workshop will focus on recent developments in the area of confor- mally invariant random processes, including rigorous results on two-dimensional models from statistical mechanics, Liouville quantum gravity, quantum Loewner evolutions (QLE), Schramm-Loewner Evolution (SLE), conformal loop ensembles (CLE), Gaussian multiplicative chaos and multifractal analysis. Closing date of the receipt of applications is 28 September 2014. Further information and application forms are available from the website www.newton.ac.uk/programmes/RGM/rgmw02

Organisers: Itai Benjamini (Weizmann Institute), Nathanaël Berestycki (Cambridge), Jean-François Le Gall (Paris Sud) and Scott Sheffield (MIT). LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

BCS-FACS Evening Seminar Joint event with the London Mathematical Society

Wednesday 22nd October 2014, 6:00pm

36

Professor Joel Ouaknine (University of Oxford)

Decision Problems for Linear Recurrence Sequences

Linear recurrence sequences (LRS), such as the Fibonacci numbers, permeate vast areas of mathematics and computer science. In this talk, Professor Ouaknine considers three natural decision problems for LRS, namely the Skolem Problem (does a given LRS have a zero?), the Positivity Problem (are all terms of a given LRS positive?), and the Ultimate Positivity Problem (are all but finitely many terms of a given LRS positive?). Such problems (and assorted variants) have applications in a wide array of scientific areas, such as theoretical biology (analysis of L-systems, population dynamics), economics (stability of supply-and-demand equilibria in cyclical markets, multiplier-accelerator models), software verification (termination of linear programs), probabilistic model checking (reachability and approximation in Markov chains, stochastic logics), quantum computing (threshold problems for quantum automata), discrete linear dynamical systems (reachability and invariance problems), as well as combinatorics, statistical physics, formal languages, etc.

Perhaps surprisingly, the study of decision problems for LRS involves advanced techniques from a variety of mathematical fields, including analytic and algebraic number theory, Diophantine geometry, and real algebraic geometry.

The venue is the London Mathematical Society, De Morgan House 57-58 Russell Square, London WC1B 4HS. Refreshments will be available from 5.30pm.

The seminar is free of charge and open to everyone. If you would like to attend, please register at [email protected]. [email protected] No. 439 September 2014

BRIAN HARTLEY visit the conference website www.sussex. ac.uk/apde/pde/index. The deadline for regis- MEMORIAL DAY tration is 6 September. There will be a one day meeting on algebra to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Brian EVOLUTION EQUATIONS Hartley's death while walking in the Lake District. The meeting will be held at the School Maxwell Institute Graduate School on of Mathematics, Alan Turing Building, University Evolution Equations will be held in of Manchester, on Wednesday 8 October 2014, Edinburgh from 8 to 10 October 2014. from 12 to 5 pm, followed by a wine reception Jointly organized by Heriot-Watt University and dinner. The speakers are and the University of Edinburgh, the school • Alex Zalesski (Minsk) aims to expose postgraduate students and • Mahmut Kuzucuoğlu (Ankara) interested faculty to some of the recent • Dan Segal (Oxford) developments in the analysis of evolution All are welcome. There is no registration fee. equations and prepare them for research in Limited funding is available to support UK these fields. postgraduate travel expenses. For more details Erwan Faou (INRIA & ENS Paris) will give including programme, registration, and applica- a short course on the analysis of stochastic tion for funding, visit www.maths.manchester. evolution equations and Christian Lubich ac.uk/news-and-events/events/brianhartleyday/ (Tübingen) on the long-time behaviour of The meeting is supported by an LMS Confer- oscillatory Hamiltonian ODEs and PDEs and ence grant. their numerical discretizations. The lectures 37 will be complemented by talks of senior par- PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL ticipants and advanced students. Some limited funding for British postgrad- EQUATIONS uate students, and in particular for students The Department of Mathematics at the Uni- from Scottish universities will be available. versity of Sussex is hosting an international Further information is available at www. conference on Partial Differential Equations: macs.hw.ac.uk/~hg94/evo14. Geometric Analysis, Calculus of Variations, The event is supported by an LMS Con- Harmonic Analysis from 15 to 17 September ference grant, the Edinburgh Mathemati- 2014. Confirmed plenary speakers include: cal Society and the Glasgow Mathematical • Stefano Bianchini (SISSA) Journal Trust Fund. • Diego Cordoba (ICMAT) • Maria Esteban (CEREMADE) MULTISCALE PDE SYSTEMS • Alexander Grigor'yan (Bielefeld) • Francois Hamel (Marseille) A meeting on Multiscale PDE Systems of Fluid • Emmanuel Hebey (Pontoise) Models and Applications in Geophysics will • Frédéric Hélein (Paris) take place in the Department of Mathemat- • Jan Kristensen (Oxford) ics at the University of Surrey on Friday 31 • Ari Laptev (Imperial) October 2014. It aims to foster conversation • Yanyan Li (Rutgers) and collaboration in addressing challenges • Giuseppe Mingione (Parma) from multiple temporal and spatial scales in • Nikolai Nadirashvili (Marseille) PDE systems modelling fluid motions. The • André Neves (Imperial) speakers include: • Henrik Shahgholian (KTH) • Bin Cheng (Surrey) • Alex Sobolev (UCL) • Mike Cullen (Met Office) • Jim Wright (Edinburgh) • John Norbury (Oxford) For registration and further information • Beatrice Pelloni (Reading) LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

• Endre Suli (Oxford) focus on new developments in the fields of • Beth Wingate (Exeter) nonlinear waves and discrete integrabil- There is a £10 registration fee. Some ity and will promote interactions between funding is available to contribute to the travel leading UK and international researchers. expenses of research students. For more in- The speakers include: formation, including how to register, see • F. Nijhoff (Leeds University) the meeting website http://personal.maths. • R. Halburd (University College London) surrey.ac.uk/st/bc0012/PDE2014, or contact • A. Doliwa (Warmia and Mazury University) the organiser, Bin Cheng by email (b.cheng@ • Y. Yomada (Kobe University) surrey.ac.uk). The meeting is supported by an • K. Khusnutdinova (Loughborough LMS Conference grant and the Department University) of Mathematics, University of Surrey. • T. Grava (Bristol University and SISSA) • D. Gomez-Ullate (Univ Complutense de INTEGRABLE SYSTEMS Madrid and ICMAT) There is no registration fee for this event IN NEWCASTLE and support for the expenses of research The second edition of the two-day meeting students may be available. For further infor- Integrable Systems in Newcastle will take mation visit the website at http://group28. place from 26 to 27 September 2014 at the northumbria.ac.uk/IS/ or contact Benoit Department of Mathematics and Informa- Huard ([email protected]). tion Sciences of Northumbria University, The meeting is supported by an LMS Confer- 38 Newcastle upon Tyne. The workshop will ence grant and by Northumbria University.

READERS’ OPINIONS ...... have your say All opinions submitted to this section are strictly those of the contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of the London Mathematical Society. If you would like to respond to any of the opinions published below, or have a separate contribution which you would like published on matters relevant to mathematics, please contact newsletter@lms. ac.uk. Items are accepted at the discretion of the Editor and subject to available space in any given edition. Fall in numbers of applications by foreign students to UK universities Toni Beardon OBE (retired from University of Cambridge NRICH/MMP - http://mmp.maths. org - and African Institute for Mathematical Sciences Schools Enrichment Centre (AIMSSEC) - http://aimssec.aims.ac.za) I was moved by the notice, in the June LMS Report recommendations http://tinyurl. Newsletter (p. 5), about the House of Lords com/nbqbvca. I hope that readers of this Science and Technology Committee findings Newsletter will sign this petition and ask on the effect of the new immigration others to do so. regulations and practices, and the hostile It is clearly a controversial matter. I have media voice (particularly in social media), in been saddened by the torrent of hostile, deterring foreign students from applying to bitter and ill informed comments it has the UK. As a result I have set up a petition generated. to the Home Secretary and new Minister of I received a very supportive email from Education https://you.38degrees.org.uk/p/ Lord Martin Rees, a member of the House of foreignstudents asking them to implement Lords Committee, in which he says “There is the House of Lords Science & Technology clearly tension between BIS and the Home [email protected] No. 439 September 2014

Office on this issue. The Government is in tion, it is an easy vehicle to gain votes and the absurd position that the easiest way to support and they are now trapped, having cut overall immigration figures is by cutting to play this tune a (good) while longer. A the categories that benefit us most! And problem is that we stand to lose by missing there is a counter-productive reluctance to out on outstanding talent coming from in- include students separately in the immigra- ternational applicants. We must realise that tion figures”. the strong and talented applicants have Dr Bogdan Roman, an academic with more options and they actually do take joint affiliation in the Department of into account the 'welcoming' aspect. We Applied Mathematics and Theoretical need more authoritative voices such as Lord Physics and The Computer Laboratory in Martin Rees' to raise awareness of the risks Cambridge, and who is involved in the Uni- involved." versity outreach programme, and in the Amongst the authoritative voices already undergraduate admissions and teaching speaking out on these issues is that of the at several Cambridge Colleges, said: "This Cambridge Vice Chancellor Professor Sir issue has been exploited politically. One Leszek Borysiewicz, see www.theguardian. aspect is that even though many politicians com/uk-news/2014/jun/02/cambridge-vice- themselves may not be against immigra- chancellor-leszek-borysiewicz.

Challenges for UK Mathematical Scientists in Higher Education Chris Linton (Loughborough University) 39 I am writing in response to Ken Brown's winning RC grants article in the LMS Newsletter (July 2014, As a specific management tool these sound pp 10-11) in which he sought views about like very blunt instruments. Sabbatical a number of issues affecting the mathemat- leave, or any other form of benefit that ics community. I have served as a head of a is designed to provide an academic with maths department for six years and also as dedicated time to focus on some activity, a more senior university manager for the is clearly valued by mathematicians for past 5 years. I thus have experience relating whom one the biggest barriers to research to the issues that Ken raises from both a success is lack of time. PhD studentships are subject and an institutional point of view. also a great way of supporting mathemati- The emphasis below is on the management cians. If it helps people develop into better perspective and my remarks are intended to academics then these mechanisms are also shed some light on university-level thinking valued by managers. The problem is that which I hope is useful. the academic and their manager may differ Most senior managers in universities are on what the word better refers to. In my not mathematicians and don't understand experience, mathematicians (more so than the world in which mathematicians operate. most other academics) wish for other math- My advice to any mathematician interested ematicians to be the exclusive judge of how in the issues that Ken has raised is to engage good they are and see no room in that as- with senior managers at every opportu- sessment for their employer to make value nity. It is only by talking constructively that judgements about the relative merits of, say, sensible decisions are reached. publishing a journal article, applying for an I will address each of Ken's nine points EPSRC grant, or being an effective admis- (reprinted in italics): sions tutor. Where you end up with a blunt 1 & 2. Award of sabbatical leave only to interpretation of this like the ones Ken ar- those winning Research Council (RC) grants; ticulates is in my view because there is no allocation of PhD students only to those real engagement between the academics LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

and their managers over how an appropri- there is usually less of a tendency to com- ate balance should be struck. promise. 3. Supervision of research student(s) a 5. Move to “tenured” status dependent on necessary condition for promotion winning external income and/or PhD super- This is a thorny issue, because the avail- vision ability of students and the nature of PhD I assume that Ken is referring here to passing student supervision differs hugely across a probationary period and being confirmed the academy. The desire for equity and in post, in which case I would be uncomfort- transparency in promotion procedures is able with a requirement for a completed very strong, but as soon as you write down PhD supervision (though it depends how specific criteria designed to cover more long the probationary period is). On the than a narrow section of a university one external income side this seems reasonable finds problems. I think supervising a PhD provided one is not expected to land a sub- student to completion should be a necessary stantial EPSRC grant in your first three years. condition for promotion in mathematics, 6. Non-submission of an individual’s outputs but recognise that this is sometimes unfair. to the REF, despite availability of a full set of A good process should always have the internationally-published outputs capacity to spot serious unfairness and make Submission or otherwise to the REF should an exception. not matter in any way (all universities have 4. Substantial external research income a signed up to this no detriment clause). necessary condition for promotion However, non-submission to the REF must 40 I think this is reasonable (in a research-inten- be for a reason and that reason may be one sive university) provided the word substan- that justifiably has other consequences. tial can be interpreted within a disciplinary 7. Departmental decisions on number of context. One argument that frustrates me outputs submitted to the REF influenced (made by academics from many disciplines) by the number of sufficiently strong impact is the following: "I don't need external statements income to do my research, therefore why Impact is an area where mathematics should I apply for any?". In the next breath lost out in the design of REF2014 and we they will say they don't have enough time should work to make things right next time. to do research. Of course I understand that We should embrace the impact agenda an academic may not need an RA to write but argue strongly that impact on other quality papers, but they do need someone academic disciplines is just as valuable for to pay their salary for the time they need to mathematics (as an underpinning discipline) devote to this. QR income earned from the as impact outside academia. I think there RAE/REF is unlikely to pay for a significant may be some sympathy with this view within proportion of the time that staff want to HEFCE provided the mathematics community spend doing research. How much is it rea- doesn't portray itself as anti-impact per se. sonable for this time to be subsidised from With the rules that we had to deal with this (in England) student fees? If your depart- time I think many departments struggled to ment brings in a few big grants every year produce lots of high-quality impact state- there will be overhead income which oils ments and I am sure that some people were the wheels and frees up time. So everyone left out of the REF as a result. However, if should be applying. There is still the problem this was the only reason for their exclusion of how to accommodate varying expecta- there should be no detriment. tions across disciplines but provided there is 8. Decisions on research fields to support or a culture in which people apply for funding appointments to make dependent on like- on a regular basis then this is usually man- lihood of future impact statements being ageable. If such a culture does not exist then generated [email protected] No. 439 September 2014

Why is there an impact agenda? Because 9. Loss of service teaching leading to the government wants to redirect funds reduced student FTE numbers and reduc- to those areas of academia where impact tions in staffing of research is most likely. So what Ken The service teaching issue is one that we describes is exactly what government hopes resolved well (roughly 10 years ago) at my will happen. Might this lead to decisions own institution: mathematics is taught by which are not in the best interests of math- mathematicians (or maths education spe- ematics as a whole? I doubt it (and we'll cialists). The quid pro quo is that everyone never know because there's no control understands that the departments that are sample to measure against). Mathematics is being served are partners in the delivery a long game. The current economic impera- and have a say in how things are done and tive won't exist for ever. The expansion of that the quality of the provision must be higher education in the UK over the past excellent (as judged by the receiving de- 20 years means that there is far more math- partment). Too often mathematics service ematics research going on now than there teaching has been seen as a right, with all was in 1990 and this is vastly more signifi- the control in the hands of the provider, cant than the effect of the impact agenda rather than what it is - a service - with the on mathematics. needs of the users paramount.

Challenges for UK Mathematical Scientists in Higher Education: Response Terry Lyons (LMS President) 41 Ken Brown’s article in the LMS Newsletter A mathematics department can, and in (July 2014, pp 10-11) should have given us most cases should, play a vital role in uni- all food for thought. And it is good to see versity life. There are many successful Chris Linton responding to it in such a direct examples around the country where quite and thoughtful manner. I would like to add small groups of mathematicians thrive and an extra personal response into the discus- add great value to their institutions. Every sion. I hope that others will feel able to join university should be in this place. Each uni- the dialogue in future editions of the news- versity should understand why it has a math- letter. ematics department, what it brings to the One area where I agree strongly with Chris institution, and how to take the partnership is the following. I believe that it is important, further. With this in mind, the LMS is trying even essential, to engage and understand to collect a series of best practise examples the perspectives of senior management of the system working well from both sides and other stakeholders if mathematics is to that can be shared with other managers and thrive. One reason Chris might consider for mathematicians. It can be very difficult to sabbatical leave and encouraging research visualise the value until one sees examples. activity has to be that paradoxically it yields If readers could bring examples of effective as a key outcome energised and motivated practise to the attention of the LMS this staff who stay up to date and deliver would be of great value. sustained high quality teaching. Thus it Mathematics is special, the Deloitte seems reasonable to suppose that in many report demonstrates the huge wider role major research universities it is the research mathematics research plays in our society; that subsidises high quality teaching, in the the successfully embedding of mathemat- sense that delivering that quality teaching ics throughout the higher education system for extended periods without the input of can add real value to the UK that is likely research active staff would be extremely far in excess of the cost of a few sabbati- difficult if not impossible. cals. LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

OBITUARIES at Kyoto University in Professor K. Tomita’s group. It was here that he began to work DAVID BROOMHEAD seriously on applied nonlinear dynamics and Professor David S. chaos, topics that underpinned his research Broomhead, who was for the rest of his career. On his return to elected a member of the UK he took up a postdoc with George the London Math- Rowlands in the Physics Department at the ematical Society on University of Warwick. They became great 19 January 1990, died friends and enjoyed a tremendously pro- on 24 July 2014, aged ductive collaboration, not least because 63. they solved the problem associated with Mark Muldoon Dave’s funding within a few months and so writes: Dave was an influential applied math- had the best part of three years to work on ematician who delighted in using different whatever they liked. Dave also made fruitful areas of mathematics in novel ways. With connections to the Dynamical Systems group Greg King he developed techniques to in Warwick’s Department of Mathematics determine whether an experimental time including Robert MacKay, David Rand and series had been generated by a deterministic Christopher Zeeman. chaotic system by combining the pure math- In the summer of 1983 Dave moved to ematical results on topological embedding the Signal Processing group at the Royal due to Takens with the engineering method Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE, now 42 of singular value decompositions. In 1989 he QinetiQ) in Great Malvern. There he wrote was awarded the John Benjamin Memorial his influential papers on delay embedding Prize for work with David Lowe and Andrew and on neural networks. Webb that exploited an analogy between In 1995, dismayed by the deteriorating intel- neural networks and interpolation using lectual environment in the soon-to-be-priva- the newly developed radial basis functions tised research establishments, Dave moved to from numerical analysis. More recently he Manchester as a Professor of Applied Math- had been working on biological signaling ematics, initially at UMIST and then after processes. In 2013 he was made an Honorary 2004, at the new University of Manchester. Fellow of the Institute for Mathematics and Working in a university environment allowed its Applications. him greater interactions with younger scien- Dave was born on 13 November 1950 in tists, and he enjoyed the process of supervis- Leeds. He attended Aireborough Grammar ing PhD students enormously. By all accounts School in Guisley, finishing in 1969. Dave the enjoyment was reciprocated. At Man- then spent a year in Uganda, studying and chester he became increasingly interested teaching, before moving to Merton College, in applications to biology, working initially Oxford, where he read Chemistry and met on eye movement control with Richard his wife Eleanor. Laboratory work proved not Abadi and later, with Doug Kell, on large- to be Dave’s forte, but he found his métier scale models of metabolism and with Mike doing research on quantum mechanics White’s group on the dynamics of intracel- during a Part III project with the physical lular signaling cascades. In recent years he chemist Peter Atkins. He stayed in Peter's lab developed a deep interest in hybrid systems for his DPhil, completing his thesis, Molecules and asynchronous processes, leading a large, in Electromagnetic Fields (on the classical lively interdisciplinary group as head of Man- theory of relaxation in nonlinear intramo- chester’s CICADA project. lecular modes), in 1976. I first met Dave in the autumn of 1989. He After a year as a postdoc at Harwell, Dave struck me as unpretentious, warm and funny took up a two-year SERC/NATO fellowship and a hugely imaginative scientist and I [email protected] No. 439 September 2014 thought I’d landed the best postdoc position University of Hull, filling the post vacated by in the world. Some 25 years later I still feel Hanna Neumann, who moved to Manchester. that way: he taught me, and many others, a His PhD was awarded by the University of Hull great deal about how to live a good life, in on the basis of papers already published. In science and beyond. 1963 he moved to Queen Elizabeth College, He is survived by his wife Eleanor, son London, where he remained, through its Nathan and his mother. amalgamation with King’s College in 1985, until his retirement in 1988. His early publica- S. SANKARAN tions, on operator algebras, extend and com- Dr S. Sankaran, plement the classical theory of Murray and known as ‘Shanky’, von Neumann in various ways, and include a died on 30 January paper on the then virtually untouched topic 2014, after a short of unbounded operators. His encyclopaedic illness. knowledge of the area was a useful resource Steve Selesnick for London physicists, and others, in the writes: He was born 60s and 70s. His interests shifted later more in Madras (now specifically to group representations, and Chennai) on 23 May 1923, the youngest he found many hitherto unexpected con- of a large family. He attended Presidency nections between some of the fundamental College Madras attaining an M.A and M.Sc. results of this theory. His output, and indeed In 1953 he obtained a scholarship to study his teaching, was characterized by elegance at Columbia University as part of the group of presentation and beauty of result. He 43 around Claude Chevalley. There he came maintained his enthusiasm for mathemat- under the influence of such other leading ics, as well as for cricket and for European lights as Harish-Chandra and I.E. Segal, but classical music, up to the end of his life. His seems to have taken his research into his own patience, kindness and subtle wit are re- hands. In New York he met his future wife membered with great affection by his friends Veronica, a daughter of E.M.W. Tillyard, the and students. He is survived by his wife, son influential scholar of early modern English (Professor G.K. Sankaran) and three grand- literature. They married in 1958 and moved children. to England, before he had obtained an Thanks to: Katherine and Norman Alling, official Columbia PhD. With the support of A. Astaneh, Mary O’Neill, G.K. Sankaran and F. Smithies he obtained a lectureship at the I.W. Selesnick.

REVIEWS RADICAL GEOMETRY: MODERN ART OF SOUTH AMERICA Royal Academy of Arts, London: 5 July – 28 September 2014

Wassily Kandinsky was very much inspired say, develop a sense of three dimensional by the structure of Euclid’s Elements when in perspective. Kandinsky believed there was 1924 he published the book Point and Line a much more profound relation at a deep to Plane in which Kandinsky attempts to spiritual level between geometry and art. For develop a scientific theory of the emotional me the exhibition Radical Geometry at the value of geometric building blocks like the Royal Academy very much seems to support point, the line, the plane etc. Geometry and this proposition. Paintings from 1930s to art have, of course, always been intimately 1970s by a number of influential artists from connected not least at a technical level at Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, and Venezuela which the artist makes use of geometry to, show how an interest in pure geometri- LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

cal form can lead to some emotionally very Clearly one can easily – as sometimes pointed moving paintings. The artwork produced out to me by mathematicians – do math- by the Sao Paolo based artists in the fifties ematics without feeling an emotional at- reminds one of figures from geometry books, tachment to the concepts studied. However, although perhaps it is certainly also these paintings stir possible to feel that the mind more effec- beauty, which, I would tively than the typical claim, always entails Euclidian geometri- emotion, is of great cal shapes. Neverthe- importance when less the construction doing mathemat- of Cordeiro’s Visible ics. Dirac is famously Idea is constructed quoted for saying: If with mathemati- one is working from cal precision letting the point of view of triangular shapes getting beauty into evolve along two one's equation, ... one spirals. With similar is on a sure line of mathematical rigor progress. Fiaminghi creates a Most of us don’t dizzying sensation of © Private collection regularly create new 44 interference by use Waldemar Cordeiro's Visible Idea (1956) areas of mathemat- of two sets of red and ics, like Dirac did, and grey interspaced elongated rhombi. These may in our daily dealings with mathematics are examples of geometry that although only encounter the technical solidity which stern and painstaking conveys warm poetic makes mathematics so wonderfully trust- sentiments. worthy and is the Does mathemat- reason why we dare ics really have an board an airplane or emotional dimension? dare to expect that Who should visit this when we purchase a exhibition? Anybody smart phone it will with a curiosity about function. So for many the relationship mathematicians a visit between mathematics to Radical Geometry and art will certainly may stimulate one find a visit worthwhile. to ponder facets I have in a couple of of mathematics we publications (available normally don’t think at www2.imperial. much about. This ac.uk/~hjjens/) argued is likely to be an that mathematics enriching experience possess similarities © The Fiaminghi Family and one that might at a subtle concep- Hermelindo Fiaminghi's Alternated 2 (1957) in fact influence how tual level beyond the we ourselves relate to immediate technical relations such as geomet- mathematics and, not least, how we present rical aspects of perspective drawing or math- mathematics to non-mathematicians. ematical analysis of how paint is distributed Henrik Jeldtoft Jensen across the surface, say in Polack’s paintings. Imperial College London [email protected] No. 439 September 2014

OUR MATHEMICAL UNIVERSE: MY QUEST FOR THE ULTIMATE NATURE OF REALITY by Max Tegmark, Allen Lane, 2014, pp 432, £25, ISBN 978-1846144769. Max Tegmark has different effective laws of physics in different done excellent expanding bubbles; this is an extension of work in observa- the standard inflationary universe model that tional cosmology by is not proven and is probably not testable. combining cosmic • A level III multiverse involves different parts microwave back- of quantum Hilbert Space (this is the Everett ground radiation many-worlds interpretation of quantum observations with physics); this is a controversial view of quan- analyses of massive tum theory that is strongly held by a small data sets on the group pf quantum cosmologists. distribution of • A level IV multiverse involves existence all galaxies, in order to possible mathematical structures, corre- observationally test sponding to different fundamental laws of the nature of the physics. This is highly speculative and there is physical universe. He is also a very adventurous no possibility whatever of testing it, despite thinker who spends some of his time contem- some claims made in this regard by the plating the deep mysteries of existence, and in author. particular the relation between mathematics, A key issue here is the distinction between physics, and cosmology. This intriguing book what is tested physics, or at least a testable sets out to describe both these aspects of his hypothesis about physical reality, and what 45 personal journey, and in doing so engages in are untestable hypotheses. The book is good some extravagant speculations on the nature of in that it tries to clearly distinguish between existence. what is well established and what is specula- The first part of the book describes his adven- tive. The problem is that he espouses the Everett tures in observational cosmology, and are of an multiverse interpretation of quantum physics engaging personal nature - the kind of thing you (his Level III multiverse) as if it is the norm. might lend a student to inspire them to consider However those espousing this view are outliers a career in mathematical physics or astronomy. in the world of quantum physics, and it is by no The second half presents increasingly outlandish means the broadly accepted view. It certainly is speculations on the nature of ultimate reality. In not an experimentally tested, or even testable, particular he proposes existence of four levels of proposal. multiverse, each more distant from possible ob- The problem with his level IV proposal is that servational test than the previous one. This part he suggest not merely that there is a multi- of the book is in effect a series of speculations verse out there that instantiates all possible about the relation between pure mathemat- mathematical structures – a proposal that is ics, applied mathematics, theoretical physics, not remotely testable - but that the universe and the physical universe. His key proposal is is a mathematical structure (the Mathematical existence of four types of multiverse: Universe Hypothesis). This is a category mistake, • A level I multiverse involves different regions confusing the existence of abstract realities of spacetime that are unobservable, but characterised by equivalence classes of math- have the same effective laws of physics; this ematical entities (he is a mathematical Platonist) is uncontroversial, because causal and visual with the possible existence of instantiations of horizons limit what we can see or have causal those structures. This is an extreme case of a contact with in cosmology. problem with many theoretical physicists: for- • A level II multiverse involves different getting the cautionary note by Aurthur Stanley regions of spacetime in a chaotic inflationary Eddington in his Gifford Lectures (The Nature of universe that are unobservable, and have the Physical Universe, 1927) that equations are LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

partial and incomplete representation of the aspects, including his rejection of infinities in richness of physical reality. They believe their the physical universe – an idea that I (following equations are more real than reality. Amongst David Hilbert) completely agree with. However the many problems this proposal raises is that most of his proposals are way beyond the these mathematical structures are eternal and bounds of testability, hence what he presents unchanging, whereas the physical universe is not science, but very speculative philoso- undergoes physical processes and is evolving. phy. Nevertheless questioning the foundations He fails to address this key problem with his ex- in this way is a stimulating and worthwhile travagant proposal. He adds further layers of venture: it is a welcome contrast to the “shut up untestable hypotheses by then considering the and calculate” school of physics. For that reason idea that maybe the universe is constituted only it can be recommended as a worthwhile read, of only computable mathematical structures provided one does not get irritated by some of (the Computable Universe Hypothesis). This in- the wilder speculations (such as talking about troduces the popular idea that physical reality simulations of the Universe by short computer is to do with computations, which confuses programs). equations with algorithms – which are quite A final comment: it is a pity the publishers different kinds of entities, quite apart from the have reproduced the interesting illustrations in issue of who decides what algorithm to use for such a small, hardly readable form. I hope future which equation, how algorithmic computation printings will present them more clearly. of physical laws is carried out by natural systems, George Ellis and how the halting problem will be avoided. University of Cape Town 46 His discussion does have many interesting

HOW NOT TO BE WRONG Jordan Ellenberg, Allen Lane, 2014, £20, 468 pp, ISBN 978-1-8461-46787.

If Jordan Ellen- to a real-world example. A major strength of the berg's How Not book is that the examples given are never artifi- to Be Wrong has cial, except when they are intended to be so: toy a motto, it is that examples designed to illustrate the general case. “Mathematics is Students learning about percentages, who ask the extension of “when am I going to use this?”, probably don't common sense want to hear about how they can calculate their by other means”. monthly spend on food as a percentage of their Ellenberg wants to monthly income. They may well though be in- show his readers terested to know how President Obama can how they can say that the majority of Americans support the use mathemat- Affordable Care act, his opponents can say that ics to make good the majority of Americans oppose the Afford- decisions in situa- able Care act, and how they can both be (tech- tions where their nically) correct. Arguably, the more people that intuition fails understand this kind of advanced citizenship, them, how to ward against fallacious reasoning the more power they hold over their govern- – in their own arguments and in the arguments ments and media not to lie to them. of others. How, in other words, not to be wrong. Other examples discussed are: when (if ever) The book comprises five broad topics of it is advisable to play the lottery, why so many linearity, inference, expectation, regression and research papers have results at significance existence. The chapters under each of these levels clustered around p = 0.05, and how early headings discuss some aspect of the topic applied to arrive at the airport*. Most of the mathemat- [email protected] No. 439 September 2014 ics in the book is introductory probability and ences annoying, but I am not one of them. To statistics, but the applications are profound and those readers who suspect the mathematician understandable to anybody. That said, maths is of being an automaton, fluent in a language not a spectator sport and, as Ellenberg warns, that is impenetrable to mere mortals, it will the lay reader can expect to work a little. Oc- surely be comforting to learn that Ellenberg too casionally Ellenberg, a pure mathematician, has seen (and presumably enjoyed) Mean Girls. cannot help but digress onto more abstract Given the venue of this review, I should problems such as Buffon's Needle. These digres- perhaps also say something about what's in sions into pure maths usually have some sig- this book for the working mathematician. nificance later in the text though, and they felt Most readers of this newsletter will not need natural to me. However, I am also a pure math- reminding about linearity of expectations or ematician, so I cannot say what effect these regression to the mean, so a lot of How Not sections might have on the average reader. to Be Wrong may be redundant for them. On Ellenberg has written numerous articles for the other hand, Ellenberg has many interesting non-technical publications such as Slate and the things to say that may not have occurred to all Believer over the last decade, which has honed readers – the relationship between formalism his skill at communicating mathematics to an in law and axiomatic geometry, for example. intelligent lay reader. As well as this, he is the Any mathematician who would like a model for author of a well-regarded literary novel, and it how to communicate mathematics clearly to a shows: his writing is a pleasure to read. Though general audience would benefit from reading his style is conversational, Ellenberg is serious this book. Anybody interested in using math- about his subject and is an articulate champion ematics to be less wrong should read it as well. of its utility, as well as its beauty. Some readers Tom Harris 47 may find his chattiness and pop culture - refer University of Southampton

*This chapter is a somewhat less serious case study to illustrate the idea of units of utility. The Daily Mail reported it with the headline ‘Spend hours in duty free or risk missing a flight? Mathematician says he has hit upon the optimal time to arrive at an airport’. The Wrong are among us.)

THE MAN OF NUMBERS: FIBONACCI'S ARITHMETIC REVOLUTION by Keith Devlin, Walker & Company, 2014, pp 192, hb £18.99, pb £8.99, ISBN: 978-1-4088-1576-2.

This book describes do's work on mathematics. the life and work Leonardo was born around 1170CE, probably of Leonardo Pisarno in Pisa, and spent some of his youth in North (better known Africa, where he learned a method of arithme- today as Fibonacci), tic that was superior to the methods based on who was one of the abacuses and Roman numerals that were used first to introduce to in Italy. In 1202, he wrote a six-hundred page Europe the Hindu- text Liber abbaci, the `Book of calculation', with -Arabic numeral the objective of making accessible this powerful system in which form of arithmetic to ordinary people in his numbers are rep- homeland -- particularly business people who resented in the carried out arithmetic as part of their work. It now familiar way contained the rules of arithmetic, much as we using ten numerals, know them today, and a wealth of practical usually 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. Devlin leads us examples. Symbolic algebra had yet to be through what little is known about Leonardo's developed, so all the examples were explained life, and explains the great impact of Leonar- at great length in words, written as if they were LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

spoken from one person to another. Despite his impressive contributions to math- The excellence of Liber abbaci, and the ef- ematics, Leonardo is today commonly called fectiveness of the new system of numbers, `Fibonacci' (derived from the Latin phrase filius gave Leonardo a level of prestige throughout Bonacci, which means `son of Bonacci') and he is Italy. He produced several other accomplished often remembered for one problem from Liber works, and a wealth of derivative texts by other abbaci about the growth of a rabbit popula- authors followed Liber abbaci, each of them tion. The solution to this problem gives a well- discussing the new form of arithmetic. By the known sequence of integers which we call the end of the sixteenth century, the new system `Fibonacci numbers'. had spread throughout Europe, and eventually Devlin's account of Leonardo is short (about people took it for granted. 150 pages of actual text) and well written. It is Although the main ideas of Liber abbaci were suitable for all: even those without knowledge unoriginal, taken from many Arabic sources, of or much interest in mathematics. The reader Leonardo deserves credit for popularizing the learns some of the history of the number system new arithmetic system, which was crucial for the widely used today, and also the little history development of mathematics, and underpins we know of Leonardo himself. Devlin makes many features of modern society. Devlin says a strong case for the greatness of Leonardo's “Every age produces a few individuals who achievements, but I need more convincing that are both very much ahead of their time and he deserves quite the level of credit that Devlin also of their time -- the former to imagine what gives him. Nonetheless, this is an attractive and is possible, the latter to make it happen. Figures thoroughly researched work, sure to appeal to 48 such as Archimedes, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, historians and mathematicians alike. Newton, and Einstein. Leonardo Pisarno, Ian Short Fibonacci, deserves to be in their midst.” Open University

Automorphisms Optimal and Equivalence Transportation Relations in Theory and Applications Topological Hervé Pajot, Université de Grenoble Dynamics Yann Ollivier, David B. Ellis, Université de Paris XI Beloit College, Wisconsin Cedric Villani, Robert Ellis, Université de Paris VI (Pierre et Marie Curie) Beloit College, Wisconsin 1 Contains short courses which give an 1 The authors’ original approach accessible introduction to problems of provides a clearer and simpler treatment current interest, and research papers of some key ideas and classical results which present modern developments 1 Provides plenty of scope for further research 1 The book presents both the theory of optimal transport and some of its many applications 1 The self-contained exposition and detailed proofs give a level of rigour that will appeal to both novices and experts 1 Of interest to researchers in pure and applied mathematics, physics, computer science and economics

London Mathematical Society Lecture Note Series, No. 412 London Mathematical Society Lecture Note Series, No. 413 Paperback | 9781107633223 | June 2014 | £45.00 Paperback | 9781107689497 | August 2014 | £40.00

www.cambridge.org/lms412 www.cambridge.org/lms413

www.cambridge.org [email protected] No. 439 September 2014

AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY

MATHEMATICAL UNDERSTANDING OF NATURE Essays on Amazing Physical Phenomena and their Understanding by Mathematicians V. I. Arnold This collection of 39 short stories gives the reader a unique opportunity to take a look at the scientific philosophy of Vladimir Arnold, one of the most original contemporary researchers. Topics of the stories included range from astronomy, to mirages, to motion of glaciers, to geometry of mirrors and beyond. In each case Arnold’s explanation is both deep and simple, which makes the book interesting and accessible to an extremely broad readership. Original illustrations hand drawn by the author help the reader to further understand and appreciate Arnold’s view on the relationship between mathematics and science. Oct 2014 167pp 9781470417017 Paperback £21.50

49 THE WAR OF GUNS AND MATHEMATICS Mathematical Practices and Communities in France and Its Western Allies around World War I Edited by David Aubin, Sorbonne Universités, université Pierre et Marie Curie, Institut de mathématiques de Jussieu-Paris Rive Gauche & Catherine Goldstein, CNRS, Institut de mathématiques de Jussieu-Paris Rive Gauche For a long time, World War I has been shortchanged by the historiography of science. Until recently, World War II was usually considered as the defining event for the formation of the modern relationship between science and society. In this context, the effects of the First World War, by contrast, were often limited to the massive deaths of promising young scientists. By focusing on a few key places (Paris, Cambridge, Rome, Chicago, Brno, and others), the present book gathers studies representing a broad spectrum of positions adopted by mathematicians about the conflict, from militant pacifism to military, scientific, or ideological mobilization. The use of mathematics for war is thoroughly examined. History of Mathematics, Vol. 42 Oct 2014 424pp 9781470414696 Hardback £92.50

To order AMS titles visit www.eurospanbookstore.com/ams

CUSTOMER SERVICES: FURTHER INFORMATION: Tel: +44 (0)1767 604972 Tel: +44 (0)20 7240 0856 Fax: +44 (0)1767 601640 Fax: +44 (0)20 7379 0609 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] distributed by Eurospan|group LMS NEWSLETTER http://newsletter.lms.ac.uk

CALENDAR OF EVENTS Systems IMA Conference, Bristol (438) This calendar lists Society meetings and 11–12 Valediction to Jeremy Gray, Open other mathematical events. Further University (439) information may be obtained from the 11–12 Recent Advances in Discontinuous appropriate LMS Newsletter whose Galerkin Methods, Reading (438) number is given in brackets. A fuller list 11–12 Heilbronn Annual Conference 2014, is given on the Society’s website (www. Bristol (438) lms.ac.uk/content/calendar). Please send 12 Limit Theorems, Probability updates and corrections to calendar@lms. Approximations and Related Areas Workshop, ac.uk. Heriot-Watt University (438) 15–17 Partial Differential Equations: SEPTEMBER 2014 Geometric Analysis, Calculus of Variations, 1 Function Theory Meeting, London (438) Harmonic Analysis Conference, Sussex (439) 2–3 British Logic Colloquium PhD Day, 15–19 UK Probability Meeting from University of Central Lancashire (438) Microscopic Randomness to Macroscopic 3–5 British Logic Colloquium, University of Phenomena, Imperial College London (438) Central Lancashire (438) 17–19 Huxley Meeting on Analytic Number 3–5 Stable Homotopy Theory Conference, Theory, Cardiff (438) 50 Manchester (437) 18 Additive Combinatorics Meeting, Bristol 3–5 Numerical Linear Algebra and (437) Optimisation IMA Conference, Birmingham 18 Recent Advances in Orthogonal (438) Polynomials and its Interactions with 3–5 Jordan Geometric Analysis and Integrable Systems Meeting, University of Applications, Queen Mary, University of Kent (437) London (432) 18–19 Post-Quantum Research Workshop, INI, 3–5 Operator Theory Workshop, Queen’s Cambridge (438) University, Belfast (435) 22–24 British Algebraic Geometry Meeting, 5–6 Caucasian Mathematical Conference Warwick (438) Tbilisi, Georgia 22–26 Bounded Gaps Between Primes, LMS– 6 Mathematics and the First World War, LMS CMI Research School, Oxford (437) Meeting, London (439) 24 LMS Popular Lectures, Birmingham (439) 6–11 British Science Festival, Birmingham 25 LMS–WIMCS Analysis Day, Swansea (439) (438) 26–27 Integrable Systems in Newcastle 8–10 British Topology Meeting, Southampton Meeting, Northumbria University (439) (438) 28–2 Oct Advances in Probability Clay 8–12 Generalized Functions, Southampton Research Workshop, Oxford (436) (438) 29–3 Oct Analytic Number Theory Clay 8–12 Derived Categories Introductory School, Research Workshop, Oxford (436) Warwick (439) 29–3 Oct Functional Transcendence around 10–12 Interdisciplinary Approaches to Ax–Schanuel Clay Research Workshop, Oxford Understanding Microbial Communities INI (436) Workshop, Cambridge (437) 29–3 Oct Symplectic Topology Clay Research 10–12 Mathematical Modelling of Fluid Workshop, Oxford (436) [email protected] No. 439 September 2014

OCTOBER 2014 6–9 Bruhat-Tits Buildings Winter Meeting, 1 Clay Research Conference, Oxford (436) Imperial College London (439) 8 Brian Hartley Memorial Day, Manchester 9 Research in Mathematics and its (439) Applications IMA Conference, Bath (438) 8 Continued Fractions and Geometry of 12–23 Random Geometry Instructional Lattices Meeting, Liverpool (439) Workshop for Younger Researchers, INI, 8–10 Maxwell Institute Graduate School on Cambridge (439) Evolution Equations, Edinburgh (439) 26–30 Conformally Invariant Scaling Limits, 17–18 Cluster Algebras and Preprojective INI Workshop, Cambridge (439) Algebras Workshop, Cardiff (439) 22 Decision Problems for Linear Recurrence FEBRUARY 2015 Sequences, BCS–FACS Evening Seminar, 4–8 CERME 9, Prague (439) London (439) 27–29 Methods for Mathematical and Empirical Analysis of Microbial Communities MARCH 2015 INI PhD Summer School, Cambridge (438) 19 Mathematics 2015 IMA Conference, Mary 30 History of Statistics, BSHM–Gresham Ward House, London (438) College Joint Meeting, London (437) 30–31 Flood Risk Assessment IMA Conference, 30–31 Structure, Function and Dynamics Swansea (438) in Microbial Communities INI Workshop, 30–2 Apr Joint Meeting of the BMC and Cambridge (438) BAMC, Cambridge (438) 51 31 Multiscale PDE Systems of Fluid Models and Applications in Geophysics, Surrey (439) APRIL 2015 20 Mathematical Education of Engineers IMA NOVEMBER 2014 Conference, Loughborough (438) 14 LMS AGM, London 22 Early Career Mathematicians' Autumn IMA JUNE 2015 Conference, Queen Mary University London 10–12 Barriers and Enablers to Learning (438) Maths IMA International Conference, 26–28 Engineering and Control of Natural Glasgow (438) and Synthetic Microbial Communities, INI 10–13 AMS–EMS–SPM International Meeting, Workshop, Cambridge (439) Portugal (439) 18–19 Mathematics in Finance IMA DECEMBER 2014 Conference, Manchester 8–10 Applications of Game Theory IMA Conference, Oxford (438) 15–17 Maths in Signal Processing IMA JULY 2015 Conference, Birmingham (438) 13–17 Conference on Stochastic Processes and 16–17 Mathematical Challenges of Big Data their Applications, Oxford IMA, Woburn House, London (438) SEPTEMBER 2015 JANUARY 2015 1–4 Numerical Methods for Simulation IMA 5–16 Periodic, Almost-Periodic, and Conference, Oxford Random Operators Introductory School, INI, 9–11 Mathematics of Robotics IMA Cambridge (439) Conference, Oxford LMS-FUNDED MEETING Representations of Symmetric Groups, Hecke Algebras and KLR Algebras held at the University of Birmingham from 14 to 16 July 2014 (report on page 25)

Andrew Mathas (University of Sydney) Ivan Marin (Université de Picardie Jules Verne) Jantzen filtrations for cyclotomic Hecke algebras A central extension of the Hecke algebra at q=-1

Eric Vasserot (Université de Paris 7) Sinéad Lyle (University of East Anglia) Categorical actions and Cherednik algebras Blocks of KLR algebras of small defect

Attendees