The Secrets of Mathematics

Michael Bonsall explores how we can use mathematics to link between scales of organisation in biology, delving in to developmental biology, ecology and neurosciences. The lecture is illustrated and explored with real life examples, simple games and, of course, some neat maths. Michael Bonsall is Professor of Mathematical Biology in Oxford.

In our Oxford Mathematics Christmas Lecture Alex Bellos challenges you with some festive brainteasers as he tells the story of mathematical puzzles from the middle ages to modern day. Alex is the Guardian’s puzzle blogger as well as the author of several works of popular maths, including Puzzle Ninja, Can You Solve My Problems? and Alex’s Adventures in Numberland.

In the first Oxford Mathematics London Public Lecture, in partnership with the Science Museum, world-renowned mathematician Andrew Wiles lectured on his current work around Elliptic Curves followed by conversation with Hannah Fry. In a fascinating interview Andrew talked about his own motivations, his belief in the importance of struggle and resilience and his recipe for the better teaching of his subject, a subject he clearly loves deeply.

Allan McRobie explains how the key to understanding the language of curves is Rene Thom’s Catastrophe Theory, and how remarkably the best place to learn that language is perhaps in the life drawing class. There is a deep connection between the stability of oil rigs, the bending of light during gravitational lensing and the act of life drawing. To understand each, we must understand how we view curved surfaces. We are familiar with the language of straight-line geometry -- of squares, rectangles, hexagons. But curves also have a language -- of folds, cusps and swallowtails that few of us know.

Sharing its title with Allan's new book, the talk will wander gently across mathematics, physics, engineering, biology and art, but always with a focus on curves.

Warning: this talk contains nudity.

Allan McRobie is Reader in Engineering, University of Cambridge

Can mathematics really help us in our fight against infectious disease? Join Julia Gog as we explore exciting current research areas where mathematics is being used to study pandemics, viruses and everything in between. Julia Gog is Professor of Mathematical Biology, University of Cambridge and David N Moore Fellow at Queens’ College, Cambridge.

Prime numbers have intrigued, inspired and infuriated mathematicians for millennia and yet mathematicians' difficulty with answering simple questions about them reveals their depth and subtlety. Join Vicky to learn about recent progress towards proving the famous Twin Primes Conjecture and to hear the very different ways in which these breakthroughs have been made - a solo mathematician working in isolation, a young mathematician displaying creativity at the start of a career, a large collaboration that reveals much about how mathematicians go about their work.

Her new book "Closing the Gap: the quest to understand prime numbers" has recently been published by Oxford University Press.

Vicky Neale is Whitehead Lecturer at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and Supernumerary Fellow at Balliol College

The study of networks offers a fruitful approach to understanding human behaviour. Sanjeev Goyal is one of its pioneers. In this lecture Sanjeev presents a puzzle: In social communities, the vast majority of individuals get their information from a very small subset of the group -- the influencers, connectors, and opinion leaders. But empirical research suggests that there are only minor differences between the influencers and the others. Using mathematical modelling of individual activity and networking and experiments with human subjects, Sanjeev helps explain the puzzle and the economic trade-offs it contains.

Professor Sanjeev Goyal FBA is the Chair of the Economics Faculty at the University of Cambridge and was the founding Director of the Cambridge-INET Institute.

Symmetry has played a role both for composers and in the creation of musical instruments. Marcus shows how composers have used this symmetry and demonstrates how Ernst Chladni revealed extraordinary symmetrical shapes in the vibrations of a metal Plate.

Marcus du Sautoy is Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.

Tim Palmer discusses Ed Lorenz the man and his work, and compares and contrasts the meaning of the 'Butterfly Effect' as most people understand it today, and as Lorenz himself intended it to mean. Meteorologist Ed Lorenz was one of the founding fathers of chaos theory. In 1963 he showed with just three simple equations that the world around us could be both completely deterministic and yet practically unpredictable. In the 1990s, Lorenz's work was popularised by science writer James Gleick who used the phrase "The Butterfly Effect" to describe Lorenz's work. The notion that the flap of a butterfly's wings could change the course of weather was an idea that Lorenz himself used. However, he used it to describe something much more radical -- he didn't know whether the Butterfly Effect was true or not.

Tim Palmer is Royal Society Research Professor in Climate Physics at the University of Oxford.

Tim Harford, Financial Times columnist and presenter of Radio 4's "More or Less", argues that politicians, businesses and even charities have been poisoning the value of statistics and data. From the tobacco companies in the fifties to the arguments of the Brexit campaign, Tim Harford takes us on a tour of truths, facts and the weapon that is doubt. Surely fact-checking websites and rational thinking are the best weapons to convince people of the truth? Or is in fact the truth simply not good enough. Do we have time or any inclination to hear it? Maybe we need to start with something simpler. Perhaps arousing people's curiosity might be just as important.

Watch Tim make his case in the latest of the successful Oxford Mathematics Public Lecture series.