Twitter: @plusmathsorg
Site: plus.maths.org/content/podcast
61 episodes
2022 to present
Average episode: 22 minutes
Open in Apple Podcasts • RSS
Categories: Interview-Style • Math
Podcaster's summary: Maths on the Move, the podcast from plus.maths.org, will bring you the latest news from the world of maths, plus interviews and discussions with leading mathematicians and scientists about the maths that is changing our lives. Hosted by Plus editors Rachel Thomas and Marianne Freiberger.
| Episodes |
| 2023-Nov-28 • 22 minutes The travelling salesman We continue our series about bringing maths to the stage and screen by going back to 2012 when we were lucky enough to host the UK premiere of the Travelling Salesman, here at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences, our home. It is an unusual movie: de... |
| 2023-Nov-21 • 30 minutes The universal machine: Putting Alan Turing on the stage When you think of Alan Turing you might think of his work breaking the Enigma code in World War II. Or you might think of his work that helped build the foundations of computer science and mathematical logic. Or you might even think of his groundbrea... |
| 2023-Nov-14 • 25 minutes A disappearing number This is the second part of our mini series focussing on mathematics coming to life on stage and in film. We revisit our 2008 interview with mathematician and actor Victoria Gould and mathematician Marcus DuSautoy, who were both involved in the develo... |
| 2023-Nov-07 • 22 minutes Have physicists discovered a fifth force of nature? In the summer we came across news coverage claiming that scientist were on the verge of discovering a fundamental force of nature they hadn't previously known about. This would be a fifth force, in addition to gravity, electromagnetism, and the stron... |
| 2023-Nov-07 • 21 minutes Victoria Gould: Combining mathematics and acting Victoria Gould has always known she would be an actor, and went straight from studying arts at school to running her own theatre company. But she eventually had to come clean about her guilty secret - she loves maths - and has since managed to combin... |
| 2023-Oct-24 • 19 minutes How many dimensions are there? How many dimensions are there? We might not be aware, but we are actually used to living in a curved, multidimensional Universe. In this episode theoretical physicist David Berman explains how, and he also dives into the world of string theory which ... |
| 2023-Oct-17 • 32 minutes Telescope topology n this podcast we bring you breaking news from the world of topology! Four mathematicians, all in earlier stages of their career, have resolved the long-standing telescope conjecture which explores holes in spheres – of any dimension! The result was... |
| 2023-Oct-03 • 25 minutes From clicks to chords How is mathematics related to frequency related to pitch? We found out from our favourite music correspondent, Oli Freke! In this podcast you can hear how the music we love emerges from pure mathematical beats. This podcast was originally released... |
| 2023-Sep-26 • 28 minutes How does human noise impact whales? We humans have many rules and regulations surrounding noise — because we recognise that noise disruption is annoying, stressful, and ultimately robs us of our health. Spare a thought for whales then, who have to put up with the constant noise caused ... |
| 2023-Sep-19 • 17 minutes Living Proof: The irrational diary of Clara Valentine This week we co-host a fascinating episode of the Isaac Newton Institute's Living Proof podcast. In the episode Dan Aspel speaks to Coralie Colmez, author of the young adult novel The irrational diary of Clara Valentine, recently chosen as one of Cha... |
| 2023-Sep-12 • 25 minutes Mathematical summer fun Did you do anything fun on your summer holidays? The mathematicians in this podcast spent some of their summer helping to create the perfect smoothie, getting the most sugar out of sugar cane, and attacking other important real-world problems. They d... |
| 2023-Jul-25 • 25 minutes Gravitational waves reveal cosmic hum There's been some huge news in the world of cosmology: for the first time scientists have detected a low frequency hum of gravitational waves. The new results were published by the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves, NANOGra... |
| 2023-Jul-18 • 22 minutes Sarah Hart: Once upon a prime People don't usually think about maths and literature as related subjects, but it turns out that there are plenty of connections between the two. In this podcast we talk to mathematician Sarah Hart about her brilliant book Once upon a time: The wondr... |
| 2023-Jun-23 • 26 minutes A very old problem turns 30! "I think I'll stop here." This is how, on 23rd June 1993, Andrew Wiles ended his series of lectures at the Isaac Newton Institute (INI), our neighbour here at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences. The applause, so witnesses report, was thunderous. Wi... |
| 2023-May-23 • 17 minutes Chocolate and mayonnaise Chocolate and mayonnaise are two of our all time favourite foods, so we were very happy to get the chance to talk to Valerie Pinfield, Professor of Engineering at Loughborough University, who has used maths to work on both chocolate and mayonnaise. W... |
| 2023-May-16 • 25 minutes From clicks to chords You might have heard in the news recently that musician Ed Sheeran was being sued for similarities between his song Thinking out loud from 2014, and Marvin Gaye's song Get it on from 1973. But, given the way we write music to fit into specific genre... |
| 2023-May-09 • 21 minutes A new map of dark matter Did you know that we don't know what 85% of the stuff in our Universe is made of? This mysterious 85% is known as dark matter. We can't see it because it doesn't emit or reflect light, but we know it's there because it exerts a gravitational pull on... |
| 2023-May-03 • 21 minutes SBIDER Presents: Shining a light on COVID modelling Was the mathematical modelling projecting the course of the pandemic too pessimistic, or were the projections justified? Matt Keeling tells our colleagues Ed Hill and Laura Guzmán-Rincón from SBIDER about some of the COVID models that fed into public... |
| 2023-Apr-25 • 19 minutes Synchronised swimming In a tank in an underground laboratory in Cambridge a little green alga is executing a powerful breaststroke. It belongs to a group of algae called volvocales and it doesn't have a brain. So how can it coordinate its tiny little "arms" to perform mot... |
| 2023-Apr-18 • 23 minutes Does infinity exist? What is infinity? What is infinity plus 100? What is infinity plus infinity? Today's podcast was inspired by questions sent in by our friend Ash. To answer Ash's questions we take a trip to our favourite hotel, and we revisit our 2012 interview with ... |
| 2023-Apr-04 • 15 minutes Climate change and ready meals: Challenges for epidemiologists During the pandemic we all learnt to value the work of epidemiologists, whose mathematical models are essential in giving us an idea of where an epidemic might be heading. But just as there's a wide range of infectious diseases apart from COVID, so t... |
| 2023-Mar-28 • 28 minutes Living Proof: Timandra Harkness – How to make maths funny "What's a statistician's favourite sandwich filling?..." Timandra Harkness – presenter, writer, comedian and Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society – told our friends Dan Aspel and Maha Kaouri her favourite maths joke in this episode of the Living P... |
| 2023-Mar-21 • 31 minutes Living Proof: Hannah Thomas – Making data accessible Having empathy with your audience – with all your audiences – is the first step for making your content accessible. Hannah Thomas of the Government Analysis Function explained this in her brilliant talk at the Communicating mathematics for the public... |
| 2023-Mar-14 • 32 minutes Living Proof: Communicating from the frontiers of mathematics We are very happy to work closely with our neighbours, the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI), to help explain, celebrate and publicise the research that happens at the Institute. But what challenges does that present? And why sho... |
| 2023-Mar-07 • 29 minutes On the mathematical frontline: Tom Irving Here at Plus, we were very grateful for Tom Irving's work during the COVID-19 pandemic. He was the Co-Head of the secretariat of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Modelling group (otherwise known as SPI-M). One of his responsibilities was writing the... |
| 2023-Feb-28 • 22 minutes Sexual statistics If you've ever been lucky enough to meet David Spiegelhalter, or hear him talk in person or on TV or radio, you'll know he tells a great story. And the stories he told in his 2015 book Sex by numbers were fascinating and highly entertaining, as well ... |
| 2022-Dec-13 • 22 minutes What are liquid metal batteries The world needs to move to renewable energy sources, such as solar or wind. The problem with those is that they're intermittent. That's because the Sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. What we need, then, are efficient ways of s... |
| 2022-Dec-06 • 21 minutes A 60% chance of rain: Weather, climate, and how to deal with uncertainty Will climate change leave the region you live in hotter and drier, or wetter and stormier? It's a question of utmost importance in many areas of the world, yet it's one that climate scientists can't answer. This is why world-leading climate scientist... |
| 2022-Nov-29 • 23 minutes Are the constants of nature really constant? There are some numbers you can rely on. The speed of light, c, is 299,792,458 ms-1. The gravitational constant, G, is 6.674 x 10-11m3kg-1s-2. These are examples of what are often called the constants of nature – fundamental physical quantities that s... |
| 2022-Nov-23 • 16 minutes Stadium maths Amid much controversy, the 2022 World Cup has begun and the action has now moved onto the football pitches inside the many newly built stadiums in Qatar. But how are these stadiums turned from architectural sketches into real buildings? For this week... |
| 2022-Nov-15 • 20 minutes Voices from Ukraine: Yuriy Semenov Yuriy Semenov was forced to leave Ukraine, and his work at the Institute of Hydromechanics at the National Academy of Sciences, due to the Russian invasion of February 2022. He found sanctuary in Britain at the University of East Anglia. In part this... |
| 2022-Nov-08 • 25 minutes Voices from Ukraine: Nataliya Vaisfel’d Professor Nataliya Vaisfel'd was until recently a mathematician at Odesa I. I. Mechnykov National University. Forced to flee Ukraine after the Russian invasion of her home country in February of this year, Nataliya has since travelled across Europe w... |
| 2022-Oct-11 • 13 minutes Women of Mathematics: Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb Over the summer we were lucky enough to meet some young female mathematicians who were just finishing up their summer research projects with the Philippa Fawcett Internship Programme and the Cambridge Mathematics Placements programme. On our way to t... |
| 2022-Sep-20 • 10 minutes Women of Mathematics: Holly Krieger In this podcast we are very happy to revisit our 2017 interview with Holly Krieger, one of the six Cambridge mathematicians whose portrait is included in the Women of Mathematics photo exhibition. Krieger works in dynamical systems theory, particular... |
| 2022-Sep-14 • 10 minutes Women of Mathematics: Julia Gog In this podcast we are very happy to revist our 2017 interview with Julia Gog - Professor of Mathematical Biology and a very good friend of us here at plus.maths.org. Over the last two years we've been working closely with Gog and her colleagues at t... |
| 2022-Sep-06 • 17 minutes Women of mathematics: Anne-Christine Davis In this podcast we revisit our 2017 interview with Anne-Christine Davis, Professor of Theoretical Physics. Anne was the first female professor in the Maths faculty at the University of Cambridge. In this interview, first recorded to celebrate the add... |
| 2022-Aug-31 • 11 minutes Women of Mathematics: Nilanjana Datta Last week we started a special series of podcasts revisiting the Women of Mathematics photo exhibition, which celebrates female mathematicians from institutions throughout Europe. When the University of Cambridge hosted the exhibition in 2017, we ha... |
| 2022-Aug-24 • 8 minutes Women of Mathematics: Natalia Berloff This month we had the pleasure of meeting some young female mathematicians who were just finishing up their summer research projects with the Philippa Fawcett Internship Programme and the Cambridge Mathematics Placements programme. On our way to the ... |
| 2022-Aug-16 • 22 minutes AI, babies, and agency In this podcast, first published in August 2020, we hear from machine learning pioneer Yoshua Bengio, who believes that creating a true artificial intelligence will only be possible once machines have something that babies are born with: the ability ... |
| 2022-Aug-09 • 31 minutes Machine learning and artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence and machines that train themselves might sound like a plot from a science fiction movie, but these things are already part of our everyday lives. How can a machine learn to distinguish a picture of a cat from a picture of a d... |
| 2022-Aug-03 • 19 minutes How the velodrome found its form To celebrate the Commonwealth Games happening this week in the UK we are visiting one of the venues, the velodrome in the Lee Valley VeloPark in London. The velodrome, with its striking curved shape, was built for the London 2012 Olympics. In the r... |
| 2022-Jul-26 • 15 minutes Maths on the red carpet - Fields Medallist June Huh June Huh has won one of this year's Fields Medals at the International Congress of Mathematicians. The Fields Medal is one of the most prestigious prizes in mathematics. It is awarded every four years "to recognise outstanding mathematical achievemen... |
| 2022-Jul-19 • 14 minutes Maths on the red carpet – Fields Medallist Hugo Duminil-Copin Hugo Duminil-Copin has won a 2022 Fields Medal for his work transforming the mathematical theory of phase transitions in statistical physics. Fields Medals count among the highest honours in mathematics and are awarded every four years at the Interna... |
| 2022-Jul-12 • 16 minutes Maths on the red carpet - Fields Medallist James Maynard James Maynard has won a 2022 Fields Medal for "spectacular contributions to number theory". Fields Medals count among the highest honours in mathematics and are awarded every four years at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) to researc... |
| 2022-Jul-05 • 22 minutes Maths on the red carpet – Fields Medallist Maryna Viazovska Hello from Helsinki! We are very pleased to be bringing you coverage direct from the 2022 International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) – one of the highlights of the mathematical calendar. The ICM takes place every four years and it's usually the b... |
| 2022-Jun-28 • 15 minutes Maths on the red carpet –Revisiting the 2018 International Congress of Mathematicians We are getting very excited - next week is the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM)- one of the highlights of the mathematical calendar! The ICM takes place every four years and it’s the biggest maths conference of them all, attracting th... |
| 2022-Jun-14 • 30 minutes The maths and magic of shuffling We all have our favoured methods of shuffling cards, but most of us don't think any more about it once we've started playing a game. But there's so much more to be discovered! In this podcast mathematician Cheryl Praeger and magician Will Houstoun re... |
| 2022-May-24 • 28 minutes Living Proof: Anita Layton – one of Canada’s most powerful women In this episode we meet the irrepressible Anita Layton. As well as leading a busy research team, Anita also spends much of her downtime fostering diversity and mentorships throughout her networks, and is professionally engaged across disciplines as d... |
| 2022-May-17 • 26 minutes On the mathematical frontline: Matt Keeling "We all work with exponential growth and we're really, really used to it, but we are still amazed at how fast things take off at the end." This is epidemiologist Matt Keeling talking about how a disease outbreak can still take you by surprise even if... |
| 2022-May-10 • 26 minutes Reducing NHS waiting lists in the wake of COVID Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for men in the UK and second most for women. During the first lockdown from March 2020, elective cardiac procedures and outpatient consultations were postponed and many appointments have not yet be... |
| 2022-May-03 • 37 minutes Living Proof: Collaborating with the Isaac Newton Institute Have you every wondered about what goes on behind the scenes of Plus? Find out in this special guest episode! We are very pleased to be collaborating with the wonderful Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI) in Cambridge. Recently P... |
| 2022-Apr-26 • 26 minutes New ways of seeing with the INTEGRAL project It's amazing what you can see now thanks to remote imaging technology! Visiting far away landscapes via satellite images or watching live feeds from a famous street is fun, but remotely gathered images offer exciting opportunities to map and observe ... |
| 2022-Apr-19 • 28 minutes How to predict a changing climate How do you go about predicting something as complex as the Earth's climate? In this podcast — featuring climate modelling experts Emily Shuckburgh and Chris Budd — we explore what those climate models look like, the uncertainties involved in climate ... |
| 2022-Apr-12 • 18 minutes Flying home with quantum physics In this week's podcast we reach into our archive for a favourite story we first heard back in 2010! The quantum world is usually associated with the weirder end of physics, including strange phenomena like superposition or quantum entanglement, the ... |
| 2022-Apr-05 • 25 minutes La La Lab: A tour through maths and music Although people often talk about the links between maths and music, if you're neither a mathematician nor a musician these links might not be that obvious. In this podcast we get to explore the connection by going on a tour of the La La Lab exhibitio... |
| 2022-Mar-30 • 22 minutes On the mathematical frontline: Francesca Scarabel Like many early career researchers, Francesca Scarabel has moved around the world to take the first steps in her career: from her home in Italy, to Finland for her PhD, to Hungary and Canada for postdoctoral research. Now she works at the University... |
| 2022-Mar-29 • 16 minutes On the mathematical frontline: Ed Hill The Mathematical frontline podcast is about the mathematicians who are grappling with the unprecedented challenge of studying a live pandemic unfolding in front of their eyes. In this podcast we are really pleased to talk to Ed Hill, a member of the ... |
| 2022-Mar-28 • 25 minutes On the mathematical frontline: Ellen Brooks Pollock and Leon Danon Like many couples, Ellen Brooks Pollock and Leon Danon, have had to make it through the pandemic juggling lockdowns, child care and work. But unlike many of us, they have also both been working together on the mathematical front line of the COVID-19... |
| 2022-Mar-25 • 24 minutes On the mathematical frontline: Mike Tildesley Mike Tildesley is now a professor in the Zeeman Institute for Systems Biology and Infectious Disease Epidemiology Research at the University of Warwick - but he started out doing a PhD in astrophysics, which is far literally and mathematically from ... |
| 2022-Mar-24 • 31 minutes On the mathematical frontline: Julia Gog Over the last two years we have done a lot of reporting on the maths of the COVID-19 pandemic. Behind the maths there are of course people — those mathematicians who make the epidemiological models that do (and sometimes do not do not) inform governm... |
| 2022-Mar-23 • 33 minutes Looking back at our first glimpse of the virus: with David Spiegelhalter Today, 23 March 2022, marks two years since the UK locked down for the first time in the COVID-19 pandemic. We relaunch the Plus podcast by looking back to where our pandemic coverage all began, by revisiting our podcast from April 2020. Back in Ma... |