Sarah Hart is a mathematician who is interested, not just in the maths itself, but also its connections to other areas of culture and art. She's done an amazing number of things throughout her career — from research in pure mathematics and heading up a maths department, to being the first woman Gresham Professor of Geometry and President of the British Society for the History of Mathematics. 

Sarah has also written a fascinating book, called Once upon a time: The wondrous connections between mathematics and literature, and she gave a talk at this year's Cambridge Festival, with the intriguing title Life in Lilliput – The Mathematics of Fictional Realms. The talk was the contribution to the Festival of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI). Sarah also participates in the Modern History of Mathematics research programme that is currently taking place at the INI.

In this episode of Living proof, produced in collaboration with the INI, Sarah tells us about the many things she has done and how they all fit together, and gives some advice for budding mathematicians of all ages: keep pursuing all the things you love doing, and one day it may turn out that they all fit together.

To find out more about some of the things mentioned in this podcast see the fllowing links:

This podcast forms part of our collaboration with the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI) – you can find all the content from the collaboration here.

The INI is an international research centre and our neighbour here on the University of Cambridge's maths campus. It attracts leading mathematical scientists from all over the world, and is open to all. Visit www.newton.ac.uk to find out more.

One thing we all have in common is that we did maths at school. Those of us from the English speaking world most likely also did Shakespeare at school. Do these two things have anything in common?

It turns out that they do! Our friend Rob Eastaway, author and Director of the amazing Maths Inspiration project, has written a book called Much Ado About Numbers: Shakespeare's mathematical life and times. In this episode of Maths on the Move, Rob tells us about some of the many instances of maths appearing in Shakespeare's work. He also tells us about the mathematical climate that Shakespeare lived in. Among other things, it included a mathematical revolution, saw music as a subfield of maths, and gave rise to the word "trivial" so much beloved by mathematicians. The book is out in paperback now.

To find out more about some of the topics mentioned in this episode, see the following links:

Every now and again, and more often than you'd think, the work of mathematics overlaps with the world of theatre and film.

This happened again recently when the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI) organised a staging of the play Diving into math with Emmy Noether. Noether was a pure mathematician whose results made waves far beyond her field. Albert Einstein called her a "creative mathematical genius". 

The play is produced by Portrait Theater Vienna in co-operation with Freie Universität Berlin, directed by Sandra Schueddekopf, and features Anita Zieher as Emmy Noether. It was put on as part of the Modern History of Mathematics research programme that is currently taking place at the INI and the Inclusivity in the Mathematical Sciences workshop that was organised by the Newton Gateway to Mathematics in March 2025.

In this episode of Maths on the move we talk to historian of mathematics David E. Rowe, who provided scientific advice for the play, about the life and work of Emmy Noether, and about what it's like putting mathematics on stage.

You might also want to read our article Emmy Noether: A creative mathematical genius.

This content was produced as part of our collaborations with the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI) and the Newton Gateway to Mathematics.

The INI is an international research centre and our neighbour here on the University of Cambridge's maths campus. The Newton Gateway is the impact initiative of the INI, which engages with users of mathematics. You can find all the content from the collaboration here.

Last Wednesday, March 26, 2025, this year's Abel Prize was awarded to the Japanese mathematician Masaki Kashiwara. The Abel Prize is one of the most prestigious honours in mathematics. It is awarded every year by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and comes with a prize money of over £550,000.

In this episode of Maths on the Move we talk to Helge Holden, Chair of the Abel Prize Committee. Helge tells us about this year's winner, the history and purpose of the Prize, and how the winners are chosen. He also tells us why good mathematicians are needed in all sectors of science and beyond, and talks about the tragic story of the mathematician Niels Henrik Abel, after whom the Prize is named.

To find out more about some of the topics mentioned in this episode, see:

The UK government has recently pledged to put around £14 billion into supporting the development of artificial intelligence over the next few years.  But because AI comes with perils as well as promises, careful policy decision are going to be crucial. In order to make such decision in an informed way, politicians need to interact with the mathematicians and scientist who develop AI.

In this episode of Maths on the Move we talk to mathematician Chris Budd who recently went to Parliament for something called Evidence Week, where he and other AI researchers talked with MPs and Peers from the House of Lords. Chris tells us about the discussions he had with politicians — about the worrying issue of bias in AI, its promising applications, for example in the medical arena, and also about the fact that AI is built on mathematics. A strong maths education, starting at primary school, is therefore essential if we're going to make the best of AI in the future.

Chris is Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Bath, co-lead of the research project Maths4DL, and Director of Knowledge Exchange for the Bath Institute for Mathematical Innovation. He attended Evidence week with a team of researchers which included Yolanne Lee, a Maths4DL PhD student who recently featured in another Maths on the Move episode. The image above shows, from left to right, Dáire O’Kane (Maths4DL), Jenny Power (IMI), Yolanne Lee (Maths4DL), and Alexandra Freeman, Baroness Freeman of Steventon.

To find out more about some of the topics discussed in this episode see

This podcast was produced as part of our collaboration with the Mathematics for Deep Learning (Maths4DL) research programme. Maths4DL brings together researchers from the universities of Bath and Cambridge, and University College London and aims to combine theory, modelling, data and computation to unlock the next generation of deep learning. You can see more content produced with Maths4DL here.

We kick off our latest series of podcasts with an episode of Living proof, produced jointly with the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI).

This episode is all about the communication of mathematics to the wider world, which is becoming ever more recognised as a priority within the maths community. We talk to Sara Khan, Communications Manager at the INI, about how this renowned research institute supports mathematics communication. And we revisit our interview with Hannah Fry who has just taken up her new role as Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics here at the University of Cambridge

As Hannah puts it,

"It's really important that people feel that [mathematics] is being done with them, not to them."

We also find out about Hannah's own research in her previous role as Professor for the Mathematics of Cities at University College London, and hear about her favourite mathematical moment.

To find out more about organisations and events in support of mathematics communication mentioned in this episode, see the following links:

This content was produced as part of our collaborations with the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI) and the Newton Gateway to Mathematics.

The INI is an international research centre and our neighbour here on the University of Cambridge's maths campus. The Newton Gateway is the impact initiative of the INI, which engages with users of mathematics. You can find all the content from the collaboration here.

Last summer we were lucky enough to attend the European Congress of Mathematics (ECM) in Seville, Spain. The Congress sees the award of several prestigious prizes, including the Otto Neugebauer Prize for the History of Mathematics.

In this episode of Maths on the Move we talk to this year's winner of the Otto Neugebauer Prize, Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze, who has worked on and written about mathematicians who fled Nazi Germany. Reinhard tells us about the motivation for his work, how the Nazi regime impacted mathematics and mathematicians, and what future historians might say about the mathematics of today.

This content was produced with kind support from the London Mathematical Society.

What is as hypnotising as a beautiful goldfish circling its bowl, but can help you understand the way a virus can spread? The answer is one of the beautiful interactive simulations produced by VisualPDE !

In this podcast we talk to Benjamin Walker from University College London, and to Adam Townsend and Andrew Krause from Durham University, who together created this online solver of partial differential equations.  Such equations describe how quantities change over space and time and therefore used throughout science to describe processes that play out in the real world — from the transmission of airborne viruses to the flow of water during a flood. Ben, Andrew and Adam tell us about their motivation for building VisualPDE and what they can do with it.

We met Ben, Andrew and Adam through the Mathsci-comm network for people who communicate maths and data science to non-expert audiences. As you can see by playing with the simulation below, VisualPDE  is a great tool for communicating maths research to non-experts, as well as allowing mathematicians to quickly simulate what their mathematical models can tell them.

Adam is also part of the team behind the brilliant Chalkdust, a magazine for the mathematically curious. Why not order the latest issue for a Christmas gift?

Suppose that lots of people are sitting in a sealed room and one of them is infectious. We'll assume that the infectious person is constantly producing virus-laden particles that spread out around them and lose their potency over time. The simulation below shows what this might look like. The colour corresponds to the concentration or amount of the virus in the air.

With VisualPDE, we're not just limited to watching a simulation: we can interact with it too. Clicking in the room will introduce some viral particles to the air, as if someone with an infection had coughed (coughing is actually a lot more complicated and is the focus of lots of research). Try clicking to see what difference a cough can make.

Though each cough introduces some virus to the room, it looks like it quickly decays away until we can't even tell it was there. So, does this mean we shouldn't be worried about a cough?

To explore this further, let's look at the probability (or chance) of getting an infection, which is related but not equal to the virus concentration. Specifically, we'll look at the chance of catching the virus assuming that you'd been in the same location for the duration of the simulation. With VisualPDE, we can do this by switching to the Probability View by pressing and choosing "Probability".

Now for the goldfish. People don't always stay still in the middle of rooms. Unsurprisingly, the movement of an infected individual can have a big impact on the spread of a virus. The next simulation is set up so that the source of the infection moves around the room, as if they were a waiter going between tables in a restaurant, perhaps. The air conditioner is turned off, so that the air in the room is still.

The Probability View shows the build-up of a ring of likely infections as the infectious person circles the room. A quick look at the Concentration View shows their circular path, leaving a trail of viral particles behind them.

To find out more about this simulation and how to explore it, go to the VisualPDE site.

The two scientific papers mentioned in the podcast are:

Predicting the spatio-temporal infection risk in indoor spaces using an efficient airborne transmission model by Zechariah Lau, Ian M. Griffiths, Aaron English and Katerina Kaouri

Turing Instabilities are Not Enough to Ensure Pattern Formation by Andrew L. Krause, Eamonn A. Gaffney, Thomas Jun Jewell, Václav Klika and Benjamin J. Walker 

Are you thinking of doing a Masters or PhD in maths or another STEM subject but are worried about funding? Then the Martingale Foundation might be for you. The Foundation's mission is "to enable and nurture talented individuals from low-socioeconomic backgrounds to thrive within world-leading postgraduate study and become STEM leaders" by providing full scholarships as well as a development programme.

In this episode of Maths on the Move we talk to two current Martingale scholars, Alexandra Sorinca and Malachy Reynolds, who have both just started their PhD at King's College London. We met them this summer at Solve for X, a mathematical modelling retreat delivered by the Martingale Foundation in partnership with the Newton Gateway to Mathematics and the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI), which challenged teams of students to solve real-life maths problems posed by industry.  Solve for X is one of the activities the Martingale Foundation provides for its scholars. Alexandra and Malachy tell us about their challenges and also about what it's like being a Martingale scholar.

We also talk to Chloe Slevin, the Martingale Foundation's Communications Manager, who explains the Foundation's aims and gives useful advice for new applicants.

As a PhD student working with the Maths4DL research project, Yolanne Lee works on the mathematics that powers artificial intelligence. In this podcast she tells us about what she thinks AI will be able to do in the near future, what it has to do with cats and dogs, and how music provided her first experience of science. We also get to hear her play the piano!

To find out more about the topics discussed in this podcast see Artificial intelligence and deep learning: Your questions answered.

This content is part of our collaboration with the Mathematics for Deep Learning (Maths4DL) research programme, which brings together researchers from the universities of Bath and Cambridge, and University College London. Maths4DL aims to combine theory, modelling, data and computation to unlock the next generation of deep learning. You can see more content produced with Maths4DL here.