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Maths News 2009 (Fa):Maths Newsletter 1 9/7/09 09:29 Page 2 Maths News 2009 (Fa):Maths newsletter 1 9/7/09 09:29 Page 2 Oxford Mathematical Institute Spring 2009, Number 7 Newsletter We hope that you How to boost global Applied Mathematics: enjoy receiving this annual newsletter. We would be The Oxford Centre for Collaborative and very interested to hear your views and comments and to Applied Mathematics receive contributions from any Oxford Alumni. In October 2007 the Global Research Partnership of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) announced that they would fund four $25 million interdisciplinary centres Please write to engaged in path-breaking research. Unusually, both Applied Mathematics and Computational The Editor Robin Wilson Science featured on the list of possible areas. MI Newsletter Mathematical Institute So four Oxford research groups – OCIAM and the 24–29 St Giles Centre for Mathematical Biology in the Oxford OX1 3LB Mathematical Institute, and Numerical Analysis and or send e-mails to Computational Biology from the Computing The Editor, c/o [email protected] Laboratory – set to work to write a proposal for the Oxford Centre for Collaborative and Applied Mathematics (OCCAM). Time was short and Designed by numerous hurdles had to be overcome, but in May Baseline Arts Ltd Oxford 2008 it was announced that OCCAM was to be one of the four KAUST centres. The hectic activity that characterised the submission process was focused John Ockendon (right) and by the partners’ joint vision of problem-driven Chris Breward are shown interdisciplinary research and its reliance, in the over the KAUST site which 21st century, on global networking. opens for students in September A The centre’s main aim is to promote interdisciplinary mathematics around the world and to address quantitative challenges in Chris Breward and John physical and biological sciences and from Ockendon in Jeddah, proudly displaying the OCCAM award. industry. It is run by members of the four core On the right is Nick Harberd groups who made the bid. (Plant Sciences), who was awarded a Personal OCCAM opened its doors in October 2008 with Conway © Stephen Photograph Investigator grant. C John Ockendon, as its Director and Chris Breward as Associate Director. The Centre is based in newly refurbished offices in the Gibson Building in the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter and is already buzzing with new appointments – four research fellows, eight postdocs and four graduate students – as well as seconded faculty from the core research groups. There are still more appointments to come and there will be a grand opening at the end of June. Meanwhile the activity within OCCAM is already creating exciting collaborative links both within Oxford and further afield. (For more details, see www.maths.ox.ac.uk/groups/occam.) n Photograph © Stephen Conway © Stephen Photograph OXFORD MATHEMATICAL INSTITUTE NEWSLETTER . SPRING 2009 . ISSUE 7 / 1 Maths News 2009 (Fa):Maths newsletter 1 9/7/09 09:29 Page 3 Obituary Professor Graham Higman, FRS Born 1917, died 2008; Graham Higman, who died last April, succeeded his former Balliol tutor and supervisor, Henry Whitehead, as Waynflete Professor of Pure Mathematics in 1960 after returning to Oxford as a reader in 1955. Higman was one of the most significant Order Theorem was proved. Higman British group theorists of the twentieth realised that this represented the future century. He strongly held the view that of the subject, but he never fully pure mathematics should be studied for embraced it. Ever the maverick, he conference called them Higman 2- its beauty rather than its utility, and he embarked on a programme of odd groups. As Martin Powell exclaimed once remarked that finite group theorists characterisations of simple groups that when first shown Norman Blamey’s were the natural successors to the fuelled many a thesis, but neither these portrait, “That’s the Graham we all classical geometers though his own work nor his own work formed part of the know and love – I’ve proved a good spanned both finite and infinite groups. core attack on their classification. theorem, you lot do better!” Many a His thesis on integral group rings, However, his particular expertise led to seminar speaker was faced by this published in 1940, had arisen from a his construction of two of the sporadic portrait, hung in the Higman Room that geometric question in algebraic topology. groups, the third Janko group and was established to mark his retirement. His mathematical career was then Held’s group. interrupted while, after registering as a Higman was the second son of a He had numerous students; to each he conscientious objector, he served in the Methodist minister and took his gave individual attention, not with Meteorological Office in Northern Ireland upbringing seriously, becoming a local scheduled meetings, but with the and Gibraltar. When Max Newman was preacher in 1936 and officiating instruction that one should appear for building the mathematics department at regularly until 2001. When his wife, tea, attend colloquia and his advanced Manchester, Higman was appointed a Ivah, died in 1981, Higman himself gave class, and come to see him when one lecturer as part of an intensely research- the funeral address; then, as since, he had something to say or ask. He might oriented group of young mathematicians. thought deeply about the role of the be sitting calculating at his glass after-death in Christianity. Some recall a His most important early work was on blackboard, but he would always put phrase “One of the murkier areas of infinite groups, first in joint work with that aside to help the student and Christianity”. Bernhard and Hanna Neumann on HNN- many of his own ideas, sketched on extensions, and later his theorem that that board, would find publicity only That address, like most of his lectures, any finitely generated group can be under the student’s name; Higman did was given without notes. His lectures embedded in a finitely presented group if not suggest joint authorship and he contained an even flow of prose and and only if it is recursively presented. The surely could not have tolerated the mathematics, with the use of the latter was of especially wide interest since Research Assessment Exercise. adjoining board for details, and his he needed to work at the boundaries of advanced classes often contained his Some found him intimidating, not least logic to establish the concept of relations most recent thinking – occasionally he by his choice of words. He once being ‘recursively enumerable’. arrived late if some detail had not quite remarked that there were three types of worked out in the way he hoped. Only It was in his Manchester years, too, student, those who wrote their own once did he diverge, to comment on the that Higman worked on the Burnside theses, those for whom he wrote their day after the 1964 General Election Problems, leading ultimately to his thesis and they understood it, and those that “this can also be done on the left, celebrated joint paper with Philip Hall who for whom he wrote their thesis but as seems fashionable these days”. in 1956. This paper has proved the they did not, while to one former foundation for ideas that have influenced student he said in public at an ICM, His retirement was spent preaching and finite group theorists ever since, and it is “When I asked you a question, I didn’t bird watching. His health gradually probably no accident that a remarkable expect you to prove a theorem”. Friends deteriorated over his last ten years, but but simple idea that lies at its heart is were not exempt; Bill Boone, after giving he came to two lectures at the numbered Lemma 1.2.3. a lecture entitled “A logical approach to conference held in January 2007 to HNN-extensions”, was firmly told, “And mark his ninetieth birthday. He was not Higman spent the year 1960–61 in for a logical and intelligible account, seen in public again. Chicago at a time when there was an read the original paper.” explosion of interest in finite simple This is an abridged version of the groups, following Thompson’s thesis Higman knew when he had proved a Obituary by Michael Collins that which had seen an almost unimaginable good result; in Chicago he had written appeared in The Independent. extension of the Hall–Higman methods; a paper entitled Suzuki 2-groups, but it was during that year that the Odd Michio Suzuki at his retirement 2 / OXFORD MATHEMATICAL INSTITUTE NEWSLETTER . SPRING 2009 . ISSUE 7 Maths News 2009 (Fa):Maths newsletter 1 9/7/09 09:30 Page 4 Institute news Mathematical Institute news Nick Woodhouse Chairman of the Mathematical Institute The past year has been another busy others, we have succumbed to the one for the Institute. temptation to translate this more complex data set into a league table. Research Assessment Exercise The results are very pleasing, however December saw the publication of the you do the analysis, but I shall do no results of the Research Assessment more than remark that Oxford Exercise, the first since 2001. This huge mathematics did very well indeed. Photograph © Rob Judges undertaking, in which every department in the country is invited to put forward OCCAM The year has seen other very this prominent chair. He brings to his the four best ‘research outputs’ of each exciting and significant developments. new task the insights from his own of its faculty members, has a very More is said on page 1 about the research as well as infectious significant impact on the reputations launch of the Oxford Centre for enthusiasm and a gift for making and funding of universities.
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