Department of Mathematics, University of Manchester
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Academic faculty in north-west England
The Alan Turing Building. Home of the School of Mathematics from July 2007
The Department of Mathematics at the University of Manchester is one of the largest unified mathematics departments in the United Kingdom, with over 90 academic staff and an undergraduate intake of roughly 400 students per year (including students studying mathematics with a minor in another subject) and approximately 200 postgraduate students in total.[1][2] The School of Mathematics was formed in 2004 by the merger of the mathematics departments of University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) and the Victoria University of Manchester (VUM). In July 2007 the department moved into a purpose-designed building─the first three floors of the Alan Turing Building─on Upper Brook Street. In a Faculty restructure in 2019 the School of Mathematics reverted to the Department of Mathematics. It is one of five Departments that make up the School of Natural Sciences, which together with the School of Engineering now constitutes the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Manchester.
The current head of the department is Andrew Hazel. The department is divided into three groups: Pure Mathematics (Head: Gareth Jones), Applied Mathematics (Head: Sergei Fedotov), and Probability and Statistics (Head: Korbinian Strimmer). The director of research is Mark Kambites.
The Manchester Institute for Mathematical Sciences (MIMS) is a unit of the department focusing on the organising of mathematical colloquia and conferences, and research visitors. MIMS was headed by Nick Higham. Other high-profile mathematicians at Manchester recently included Martin Taylor and Jeff Paris.
Manchester mathematicians have a long tradition of applying mathematics to industrial problems. Nowadays this involves not only the traditional applications in engineering and the physical sciences, but also in the life sciences and the financial sector. Some of the recent industrial partners include Qinetiq, Hewlett Packard, NAg, MathWorks, Comsol, Philips Labs, Thales Underwater Systems, Rapiscan Systems and Schlumberger.
Research Assessment Exercise (2008)
The department of Mathematics entered research into three units of assessment. In Pure Mathematics 20% of submissions from 27 FTE category A staff were rated 4* (World Class) and 40% 3* (Internationally Excellent). In Applied Mathematics 25% of submissions from 28.8 FTE category A staff were rated 4* and 35%, 3*. And in Statistics and Operational Research, 20% of submissions from 10.9 FTE category A staff were rated 4* and 35%, 3*.[3]
History
At the time of merger the two departments that came together to form the school were of roughly equal sizes and academic strengths, and already had a substantial record of collaboration including shared research seminar programmes and fourth year undergraduate and MSc programmes.
Many famous mathematicians have worked at the precursor departments to the department.
In 1885 Horace Lamb, famous for his contribution to fluid dynamics accepted a chair at the VUM and under his leadership the department grew rapidly. Newman wrote:
'His lecture courses were numerous, and his books provide a record of his methods. Many of his students were engineers, and they found in him a sympathetic guide, one who understood their difficulties and shared their interest in applications of mathematics to mechanics.'
Although Manchester was later to be known as the birthplace of the electronic computer, Douglas Hartree made an earlier contribution building a differential analyser in 1933. The machine was used for ballistics calculations as well calculating railway timetables.
Mordell was succeeded by the famous topologist and cryptanalystMax Newman in 1945 who, as head of department, transformed it into a centre of international renown.[4] Undergraduate numbers increased from eight per year to 40 and then 60. In 1948 Newman recruited Alan Turing as Reader in the department, and he worked there until his death in 1954, completing some of his profound work on the foundations of computer science including Computing Machinery and Intelligence. Newman retired in 1964. From 1949 to 1960 M. S. Bartlett held the first chair in mathematical statistics at VUM, he is known for his contribution to the analysis of data with spatial and temporal patterns, the theory of statistical inference and in multivariate analysis. At Manchester he developed an interest in epidemiology, building a strong group in mathematical statistics and strengthening the department.
Frank Bowman was the longest serving head of Mathematics at UMIST: 1933–1957. This portrait was presented to the department by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Up until the 1950s, UMIST's Mathematics Department taught largely service courses for the engineering and applied science courses, and despite stars such as Richardson, Mordell and in 1958–1963 group theorist Hanna Neumann, did not have a strong focus on research. Neumann was later to be the first woman appointed to a Professorial Chair of Mathematics in Australia.
The Maths and Social Sciences Building, which housed the UMIST Department of Mathematics from 1968 until merger, and part of the merged department until the opening of the Alan Turing Building in July 2007
With the rapid expansion of higher education and the starting of an undergraduate mathematics degree this changed, and by 1968 the 15-storey Maths and Social Sciences Building (MSS) was completed on UMIST campus to house the growing department. In 1960 Robin Bullough joined the UMIST department initiating four decades of mathematical physics focusing especially on solitons. The statistics group also grew in strength with an emphasis on time series, led by Maurice Priestley and also Tata Subba Rao. In 1986 pure mathematics at UMIST was strengthened by the appointment of Martin J. Taylor FRS, famous for his work on properties and structures of algebraic numbers.
Another renowned topologist, Frank Adams, succeeded Newman in the Fielden Chair, which he held from 1964 to 1970.
The VUM Mathematics tower was demolished in 2005, with most of the staff moving to temporary buildings, the pure mathematicians to one named after Newman and the applied to one named after Lamb. The history of the department entered a new phase in July 2007 with the move to the Alan Turing Building. The department was known as the School of Mathematics until a 2019 faculty-wide restructuring.[5]
In 2013, the Sir Horace Lamb Chair was founded in memory of Sir Horace Lamb.[6] The chair was inaugurated in May 2013 with the appointment of Professor Oliver Jensen, who already held a personal chair in the school.
Maxwell Herman Alexander Newman, FRS, generally known as Max Newman, was a British mathematician and codebreaker. His work in World War II led to the construction of Colossus, the world's first operational, programmable electronic computer, and he established the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory at the University of Manchester, which produced the world's first working, stored-program electronic computer in 1948, the Manchester Baby.
The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) was a university based in the centre of the city of Manchester in England. It specialised in technical and scientific subjects and was a major centre for research. On 1 October 2004, it amalgamated with the Victoria University of Manchester to produce a new entity called the University of Manchester.
The University of Manchester is a public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester City Centre on Oxford Road. The university owns and operates major cultural assets such as the Manchester Museum, The Whitworth art gallery, the John Rylands Library, the Tabley House Collection and the Jodrell Bank Observatory – a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The University of Manchester is considered a red brick university, a product of the civic university movement of the late 19th century. The current University of Manchester was formed in 2004 following the merger of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) and the Victoria University of Manchester. This followed a century of the two institutions working closely with one another.
The Manchester Baby, also called the Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), was the first electronic stored-program computer. It was built at the University of Manchester by Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn, and Geoff Tootill, and ran its first program on 21 June 1948.
Sydney Chapman was a British mathematician and geophysicist. His work on the kinetic theory of gases, solar-terrestrial physics, and the Earth's ozone layer has inspired a broad range of research over many decades.
Louis Joel Mordell was an American-born British mathematician, known for pioneering research in number theory. He was born in Philadelphia, United States, in a Jewish family of Lithuanian extraction.
Sir Horace Lamb was a British applied mathematician and author of several influential texts on classical physics, among them Hydrodynamics (1895) and Dynamical Theory of Sound (1910). Both of these books remain in print. The word vorticity was invented by Lamb in 1916.
The Fielden Chair of Pure Mathematics is an endowed professorial position in the School of Mathematics, University of Manchester, England.
The Richardson Chair of Applied Mathematics is an endowed professorial position in the School of Mathematics, University of Manchester, England. The chair was founded by an endowment of £3,600 from one John Richardson, in 1890. The endowment was originally used to support the Richardson Lectureship in Mathematics. One holder of the Richardson Lectureship was John Edensor Littlewood (1907-1910). The position lapsed in 1918, but was resurrected as a lectureship in Pure Mathematics between 1935 and 1944. There was then a further hiatus until the establishment of the Richardson Chair of Applied Mathematics in 1998. The current holder is Nicholas Higham.
The Beyer Chair of Applied Mathematics is an endowed professorial position in the Department of Mathematics, University of Manchester, England. The endowment came from the will of the celebrated locomotive designer and founder of locomotive builder Beyer, Peacock & Company, Charles Frederick Beyer. He was the university's largest single donor.
Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR) is a research institute based in Alliance Manchester Business School at the University of Manchester, UK. MIoIR is a centre of excellence in the fields of innovation studies, technology management and innovation management, science policy, technology policy, innovation policy and regional innovation, the study of emerging technologies, responsible research and innovation, and research into socio-technical transitions with a focus on sustainability and digital transitions. MIoIR has also been known for research on service innovation and in particular the definition and early exploration of the concept of knowledge-intensive business services, through the work of scholars such as Ian Miles and Bruce Tether.
The Maths and Social Sciences Building is a high-rise tower in Manchester, England. It was part of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) until that university merged with the Victoria University of Manchester, to form the University of Manchester, in 2004. It was vacated by the university in 2010 but is currently in use by the School of Materials while waiting for a new building to be constructed.
The Alan Turing Building, named after the mathematician and founder of computer science Alan Turing, is a building at the University of Manchester, in Manchester, England. It houses the School of Mathematics, the Photon Science Institute and the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics (JBCA). The building is located in the Chorlton-on-Medlock district of Manchester, on Upper Brook Street, and is adjacent to University Place and the Henry Royce Institute.
The Department of Mechanical, Aerospace & Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester was formed from three departments in the 2004 merger between the Victoria University of Manchester (VUM) and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). The merged departments were the Department of Civil and Construction Engineering which was joint between both universities, the Department of Mechanical Aerospace and Manufacturing Engineering at UMIST and the Manchester School of Engineering at VUM.
Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathematical science and specialized knowledge. The term "applied mathematics" also describes the professional specialty in which mathematicians work on practical problems by formulating and studying mathematical models.
The Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics is the research institute in mathematics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. It was created in 1950 by Alfréd Rényi, who directed it until his death. Since its creation, the institute has been the center of mathematical research in Hungary. It received the title Centre of Excellence of the European Union (2001). The current director is András Stipsicz. The institute publishes the research journal Studia Scientiarum Mathematicarum Hungarica.
Ioannis Kontoyiannis is a Greek mathematician and information theorist. He is the Churchill Professor of Mathematics for Operational Research with the Statistical Laboratory, in the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics, of the University of Cambridge. He is also a Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge, an affiliated member of the Division of Information Engineering, Cambridge, a Research Fellow of the Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas, a Senior Member of Robinson College, Cambridge, and a trustee of the Rollo Davidson Trust.
David James Silvester is a British numerical analyst. He has a Chair in Numerical Analysis and is the Head of Applied Mathematics in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Manchester.
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