9 December 2009

Bob Kerr elected Fellow of the American Physical Society

The APS citation rcognises his pioneering mix of 3D direct numerical simulations with analysis inspired by mathematics and physics to turbulent statistics, thermal convection, intense events and novel LES approaches. His 1993 Euler calculation has withstood the test of time and continues to inspire new mathematics.

The APS Fellowship Program was created to recognize members who may have made advances in physics through original research and publication, or made significant innovative contributions in the application of physics to science and technology. They may also have made significant contributions to the teaching of physics or service and participation in the activities of the Society. Each year, no more than one half of one percent of the Society membership is recognized by their peers for election to the status of Fellow in the American Physical Society.

7 December 2009

New EPSRC Mathematics and Statistics Centre for Doctoral Training

The Departments of Mathematics and Statistics are to receive £4m EPSRC funding to establish a joint Centre for Doctoral Training, MASDOC, as part of an EPSRC scheme "Future of Maths" at Lancaster, Cambridge and Warwick. These are the first centres to be dedicated to mathematical sciences. The new centres will take in their first students in the 2010-11 academic year and each will train at least 40 students over a seven year period.

Full press release

30 September 2009

Tom Collyer – Sudoku Champion

Tom Collyer, a PhD student from the Mathematics Institute, has won the Times National Su Doku Championship for the second time – making him one of only two people ever to win the Championship more than once. Ranked as number 26 in the world, Tom arranged 324 numbers into 4 Su Doku grids in just 17 minutes to take first place.

Warwick People item here.

28 September 2009

Bill Hart helps find solutions to thousand year old problem

Bill Hart is part of a team of mathematicians from North America, Europe, Australia, and South America who have found the congruent numbers up to one trillion, a thousand year old mathematics problem of al-Karaji: find the integers n (called congruent numbers) for which there is a rational square a² such that a²+n and a²-n are also rational squares. Equivalently, congruent numbers are the integers which are areas of right-angled triangles with sides of rational length.

One example is given by (41/12)²+5=(49/12)², (41/12)²-5=(31/12)² so 5 is a congruent number. The 3-4-5 triangle has area 1/2 x 3 x 4 = 6 so 6 is a congruent number.

The advance was made possible by a clever technique for multiplying large numbers which allowed the team to resolve the first one trillion cases of the ancient mathematics problem. The numbers involved are so enormous that if their digits were written out by hand they would stretch to the moon and back. The biggest challenge was that these numbers could not even fit into the main memory of the available computers, so the researchers had to make extensive use of the computers’ hard drives.

According to Brian Conrey, Director of the American Institute of Mathematics, “Old problems like this may seem obscure, but they generate a lot of interesting and useful research as people develop new ways to attack them.”

Full press release.

29 June 2009

Leslie Fox Prize 2009

The 14th Leslie Fox Prize in Numerical Analysis was held at Warwick on June 29th. The prize committee comprised Andrew Stuart (Warwick, Chair), Mark Ainsworth (Strathclyde) and Nick Higham (Manchester). Five second prizes were awarded and one first prize.

Pictured (from left to right) are Armin Lechlieter (CMAPX Paris, second prize), Brian Sutton (Randolph-Macon, first prize), Colin Macdonald (UCLA, second prize), Andrew Stuart (Chair, Prize Committee), Daan Huybrechs (Leuven, second prize), Liuqiang Zhong (Xiangtan, second prize) and Stefano Giani (Nottingham, second prize).

Click here for further details.

26 June 2009

MMath student Neil Zussman reaches semi-final of Countdown

Congratulations to Neil Zussman a third year undergraduate on the MMath degree. Neil reached the semi-final stage of series 60 of Channel 4's Countdown words and numbers game before being knocked out by the eventual series winner Kirk Bevins.

25 May 2009

Andrew Stuart awarded Fellowship of SIAM

The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) has announced the SIAM Fellows Class of 2009 and the inauguration of the SIAM Fellows Program. Fellowship is an honorific designation conferred on members distinguished for their outstanding contributions to the fields of applied mathematics and computational science. During this inaugural year of the program, SIAM will confer Fellows status on 183 noteworthy professionals who will be recognized during the 2009 SIAM Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado.

27 March 2009

Ian Stewart shortlisted for Galileo Literary Prize 2009

Professor Ian Stewart, FRS has been shortlisted for Galileo Literary Prize.

The shortlist of five finalists for the Premio letterario Galileo 2009 was selected by a jury presided over by Professor Margerita Hack. The Galileo Literary Prize for Science Diffusion is promoted by numerous Italian organisations including the city and university of Padua, the Italian Ministry of Culture and the Galileo Academy of Science, Letters and Arts of Padua. The winner will be selected by a jury of 2000 school children from high schools of all the regions of Italy who have each received copies of the books.

The shortlisted book is the Italian translation by Luigi Civalleri, "L’eleganza della verità. Storia della simmetria" of Professor Stewart's book on symmetry "Why Beauty Is Truth: The History of Symmetry"

8 January 2009

Miles Reid appointed Distinguished Professor at Sogang University, Seoul

Professor Miles Reid FRS has been appointed a Distinguished Professor at Sogang University, Seoul, under World Class University project R33-2008-000-10101-0 of the Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.

The World Class Universities project is administered by the Korean Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) (PDF leaflet) and is aimed at transforming Korean universities into world-class research institutions. The distinguished world-class scholars section of the programme involves a stay of at least two months per year at a host university to conduct research and operate curricula.

8 January 2009

Jeremy Gray awarded Whiteman Memorial Prize by AMS

Professor Jeremy Gray of the Open University and an Honorary Professor at Warwick, as well as teacher of the popular MA3E5 History of Mathematics module, has been awarded the Albert Leon Whiteman Memorial Prize for 2009. The Prize, now to be awarded triennially by the American Mathematical Society, is in memory of Albert Leon Whiteman, to recognize notable exposition and exceptional scholarship in the history of mathematics.

The citation “recognizes the value of [Gray's] many historical works, which have not only shed great light on the history of modern mathematics but also have given an example of the ways in which historical scholarship can contribute to the understanding of mathematics and its philosophy. In addition, Gray's work as an editor, teacher, translator, and organizer of forums for historical work has helped invigorate the study of the history of modern mathematics internationally” and concludes “Jeremy Gray's spirited presentations of a wide range of subjects of nineteenth and twentieth century mathematics have earned the respect of his colleagues for the quality of both their historical scholarship and their mathematical accuracy and insight, exactly the traits that the Whiteman Prize is meant to recognize.”

18 December 2008

Warwick Mathematics research rated “World-Leading” in RAE2008

Warwick Pure Mathematics was ranked 2nd in the UK in the 2008 RAE and Applied Mathematics ranked equal first in the UK for the proportion of its research given the top 4* “world-leading” rating.

Head of Department Professor Colin Sparrow said: I am delighted that Warwick's international reputation for research has been confirmed by the results of the most recent Research Assessment Exercise, RAE2008. Pure Mathematics came 2nd in the UK using each of the three most commonly used ranking systems. Applied Mathematics came first equal in the UK when ranked according to the proportion of 4* (world-leading) research, and 7th in the UK when ranked according to GPA (as used, for example, by the Times Higher Education).

Taking Pure and Applied Mathematics together, over 70% of our research was rated as either 4* (world-leading) or 3* (internationally excellent).

This outcome reflects the excellence and originality of all our staff, the strong support of the University for the Department and its research strategy, and the hard work of everyone concerned over the whole of the RAE assessement period (2001–2007).