Past lectures
In the 8th century Alcuin of York described the wolf, goat and cabbage problem - so did Lewis Carroll over 1000 years later. This...
WE ALL HAVE OUR PROBLEMS Mathematicians can be divided into theory-builders and problem-solvers. In these lectures, we look at some...
The First World War was the first time that war was fought in the air. Aircraft technology was in its infancy and mathematicians not...
How did numbers arise? How were they written down? What does it mean to say that numbers are rational, complex, or transcendental? What...
From the writers of Mesopotamian tablets, via treachery in 16th-century Italy, to a famous duel fought in Paris, the history of algebra...
From the Egyptian pyramids to modern sculpture, geometry has been at the heart of our culture. Central to this story has been '...
This is the 2007 joint London Mathematical Society / Gresham College lecture.
The other lectures held in collaboration with the...
Leönhard Euler (born 15 April 1707), the 'Mozart of mathematics', was probably the...
What do we mean by exponential growth? How quickly does your bank balance grow? How quickly does a cup of tea cool, or radium decay?...
What is meant by the square root of minus 1? why is it 'imaginary'? what are complex numbers, and why are they useful? how can we...
The 'circle number' pi has fascinated people for thousands of years. Who first called it pi? who had it engraved on their tombstone? who...
What is the Mandelbrot set? how can prime numbers protect your bank balance? and why is mathematics incomplete? More new mathematics...
