i “NLMS_479” — 2018/11/19 — 11:26 — page 1 — #1 i i i NEWSLETTER Issue: 479 - November 2018 THE STATISTICS OF HARDY–RAMANUJAN INTERNATIONAL VOLCANIC PARTITION CONGRESS OF SUPER-ERUPTIONS FORMULA MATHEMATICIANS i i i i i “NLMS_479” — 2018/11/19 — 11:26 — page 2 — #2 i i i EDITOR-IN-CHIEF COPYRIGHT NOTICE Iain Moatt (Royal Holloway, University of London) News items and notices in the Newsletter may [email protected] be freely used elsewhere unless otherwise stated, although attribution is requested when reproducing whole articles. Contributions to EDITORIAL BOARD the Newsletter are made under a non-exclusive June Barrow-Green (Open University) licence; please contact the author or photog- Tomasz Brzezinski (Swansea University) rapher for the rights to reproduce. The LMS Lucia Di Vizio (CNRS) cannot accept responsibility for the accuracy of Jonathan Fraser (University of St Andrews) information in the Newsletter. Views expressed Jelena Grbic´ (University of Southampton) do not necessarily represent the views or policy Thomas Hudson (University of Warwick) of the Editorial Team or London Mathematical Stephen Huggett (University of Plymouth) Society. Adam Johansen (University of Warwick) Bill Lionheart (University of Manchester) ISSN: 2516-3841 (Print) Mark McCartney (Ulster University) ISSN: 2516-385X (Online) Kitty Meeks (University of Glasgow) DOI: 10.1112/NLMS Vicky Neale (University of Oxford) Susan Oakes (London Mathematical Society) David Singerman (University of Southampton) Andrew Wade (Durham University) NEWSLETTER WEBSITE The Newsletter is freely available electronically Early Career Content Editor: Vicky Neale at lms.ac.uk/publications/lms-newsletter. News Editor: Susan Oakes Reviews Editor: Mark McCartney MEMBERSHIP CORRESPONDENTS AND STAFF Joining the LMS is a straightforward process. For membership details see lms.ac.uk/membership. LMS/EMS Correspondent: David Chillingworth Policy Digest: John Johnston Production: Katherine Wright SUBMISSIONS Printing: Holbrooks Printers Ltd The Newsletter welcomes submissions of fea- ture content, including mathematical arti- EDITORIAL OFFICE cles, career related articles, and microtheses from members and non-members. Submis- London Mathematical Society sion guidelines and LaTeX templates can be De Morgan House found at lms.ac.uk/publications/submit-to-the- 57–58 Russell Square lms-newsletter. London, WC1B 4HS [email protected] Feature content should be submitted to the editor-in-chief at [email protected]. Charity registration number: 252660 News items should be sent to [email protected]. Notices of events should be prepared us- ing the template at lms.ac.uk/publications/lms- newsletter and sent to [email protected]. COVER IMAGE For advertising rates and guidelines see © bigjom — stock.adobe.com lms.ac.uk/publications/advertise-in-the-lms- See J. Rougier’s article on volcanoes p27. newsletter. i i i i i “NLMS_479” — 2018/11/19 — 11:26 — page 3 — #3 i i i CONTENTS NEWS The latest from the LMS and elsewhere 4 LMS BUSINESS Reports from the LMS 11 FEATURES Postcard from the International Congress of Mathematicians 16 The Centenary of the Hardy–Ramanujan Partition Formula: The LMS Connection 25 ‘Apocalyptic volcanic super-eruption that could DESTROY civilisation is much closer than we thought, say experts’ 27 The Finnish Mathematical Society 32 EARLY CAREER Microthesis: Growth in Virtually Abelian Groups 34 REVIEWS From the bookshelf 37 OBITUARY In memoriam 42 EVENTS Latest announcements 43 CALENDAR All forthcoming events 46 i i i i i “NLMS_479” — 2018/11/19 — 11:26 — page 4 — #4 i i i 4 NEWS Forthcoming LMS Events Standing Orders of the Society The following events will take place in the next two Readers may recall an article in the last issue of months: the Newsletter about proposals for changes to the Standing Orders of the Society. This note is to inform BCS-FACS Evening Seminar: 1 November, London members of the dates of the consultation process. It (tinyurl.com/bcsfacs) will be possible to make and see comments through Computer Science Colloquium: 8 November, Lon- a blog on the LMS website, and also to make direct don (tinyurl.com/yc5e6gr3) responses to the consultation by email. Graduate Student Meeting: 9 November, London The consultation will open at the beginning of Novem- (tinyurl.com/y8hafqjx) ber, and will close on 20 January 2019. This is in AGM and Naylor Lecture: 9 November, London order that responses can be collated before Council’s (tinyurl.com/y7q5dsgk) “retreat” at the beginning of February. South West & South Wales Regional Meeting and Workshop: 17 December, Exeter Details of the proposed changes, including the full (tinyurl.com/ydymqdeq) text of the old and proposed new versions of the Standing Orders, will be circulated to members as A full listing of forthcoming LMS events can be found soon as the consultation is open, along with informa- on page 46. tion on how to access the blog and how to submit an email response. Vacancies on LMS Committees Cecil King Memorial Foundation The detailed business of the LMS is run by about 23 committees and working groups, each usually having The Cecil King Memorial Foundation and the Lon- about 10 people. Altogether this comes to a large don Mathematical Society are delighted to announce number of people, to whom the Society is extremely that the Cecil King Travel Scholarship 2018 has been grateful for this vital work. awarded to Simon Crawford (University of Waterloo), who will undertake a period of research with S. Paul It is Council’s responsibility to make the appoint- Smith and James Zhang at the University of Wash- ments to all these committees and to turn their ington in 2019. membership over regularly, so that (a) the broadest possible spectrum of our membership is represented, Simon Crawford writes: During my PhD, my research and (b) the committees remain fresh and energetic. focused on noncommutative ring theory and noncom- Of course, when forming a committee, account has mutative geometry. I am very grateful to be awarded to be taken of many things, such as maintaining sub- the Cecil King Travel Scholarship, which will allow me ject and demographic balance, which means that on to travel to the University of Washington to work with a given occasion otherwise very strong candidates S. Paul Smith. Paul has been a leading gure in non- may not always be able to be appointed. commutative geometry since its inception and has a great deal of experience working with AS regular al- So we are always looking for new people! See gebras, in particular the Sklyanin algebra. One of the lms.ac.uk/about/committees for a list of committees. projects I hope to work on will involve studying the singularities of algebras related to Sklyanin algebras, If you are interested, or would like to recommend a and his experience will be invaluable for this. James colleague, please contact Katherine Wright at Kather- Zhang is another mathematician at Washington who [email protected] in order that Council can main- has also made many fundamental contributions to my tain a good list of potential members of its various areas of interest. Recent work by James and his col- committees. It is not necessary to specify a partic- laborators identied ‘quantum’ analogues of Kleinian ular committee. If you would like to know what is singularities, and one of the results in my thesis showed involved, you could in the rst instance ask your LMS that in many cases these rings are Morita equivalent Departmental Representative. to (respectively, isomorphic to) certain path algebras (respectively, corner rings of path algebras). I believe this is also true for the remaining cases and hope to Stephen Huggett prove this while at Washington, and James’ perspective LMS General Secretary will be very helpful for this. i i i i i “NLMS_479” — 2018/11/19 — 11:26 — page 5 — #5 i i i NEWS 5 The Cecil King Travel Scholarship was established in from Paris and from St Petersburg for hosting the 2001 by the Cecil King Memorial Fund. Applications ICM 2022. The delegates decided that St Petersburg for the 2019 award are now open — further details will host the 2022 International Congress of Mathe- on page 7. matics. For details see icm2022.ru/en/. The ICM 2022 will be preceded by the IMU GA. IMU General Assembly, São Paolo Isobel Falconer (St Andrews) was elected to the Prior to the ICM 2018 in Rio, the General Assembly of Executive Committee of the International Commis- the IMU took place in São Paolo, Brazil, from 29 to 30 sion on History of Mathematics (ICHM), of which June July. Bids were presented to the General Assembly Barrow-Green is Chair. MATHEMATICS POLICY DIGEST Global development challenges Dr Kevin Houston, LMS Education Secretary, com- mented: “It is great to see that mathematics is the EPSRC has released further information on tackling most popular A-level subject and that so many stu- global development challenges through mathemat- dents are attaining excellent grades. Our congratula- ical sciences and will launch two complementary tions to the students and teachers who have worked Global Challenges Research Fund calls for propos- so hard to make this happen. A worrying outcome als to tackle such challenges. One call will be for of A-level reforms are the large drops in AS entries research proposals on empowering inclusion and for Mathematics and Further Mathematics. Coupled building society, and the other will be for capacity with only a small number taking Core Mathematics, building. Expressions of Interest should be submitted this means that there are far fewer students experi- by 8 November 2018. Further details are available at encing Mathematics beyond 16 when the UK should tinyurl.com/yc2qjj9k. be ensuring that the opposite is true.” UK Participation in Horizon 2020 Algorithms in decision making The UK government has provided an overview of the In May 2018 the House of Commons Science and UK’s relationship with Horizon 2020.