The Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences is an international research institute for mathematics and its many applications at the University of Cambridge. It is named after one of the university's most illustrious figures, the mathematician and natural philosopher Sir Isaac Newton, and occupies one of the buildings in the Cambridge Centre for Mathematical Sciences.
After a national competition run by SERC, the Science and Engineering Research Council (now known as EPSRC Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), this institute was chosen to be the national research institute for mathematical sciences in the UK. [1] It opened in 1992 with support from St John's College and Trinity College. [1] St. John's provided the land and a purpose-built building, Trinity provided running costs for the first five years and the London Mathematical Society provided other support. [1]
Shortly afterwards at the institute, the British mathematician Andrew Wiles announced his approach to proving Fermat's Last Theorem in three lectures on 21–23 June 1993. [2] In 1999 the institute was awarded a Queen's Anniversary Prize in recognition of "world-class achievement in education." Although it is part of the national infrastructure for mathematical research, it is formally part of the University of Cambridge, from which it receives some funding. Nowadays five UK Research Councils, BBSRC, EPSRC, ESRC, NERC, STFC support about 55% of its activity. A number of philanthropic individuals, family and educational trusts, private companies and bodies associated with the University of Cambridge generously give their support. [1]
There are typically two or three programmes at any one time, each with up to twenty people and lasting between 4 weeks and 6 months. [3] During these periods of activity there are courses and workshops for the attendees. [4]
Programmes are chosen from proposals that cover the entire range of mathematical sciences and their applications by a Scientific Steering Committee of mathematical scientists solely on their scientific merit and the likelihood that they will have significant impact in their subject. [3]
Although programmes are normally residential and planned several years ahead, during the COVID-19 pandemic, an urgent 6-workshop virtual programme on the Infectious Dynamics of Pandemics was approved and ran from April to September 2020. This was a successor to a 2013 programme on Infectious Disease Dynamics, and was complemented by virtual study groups and commissioned modelling for government. [5]
The institute is chaired by technology entrepreneur and founder of Cantab Capital Partners, Ewan Kirk.
Sir Andrew John Wiles is an English mathematician and a Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Oxford, specialising in number theory. He is best known for proving Fermat's Last Theorem, for which he was awarded the 2016 Abel Prize and the 2017 Copley Medal and for which he was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2000. In 2018, Wiles was appointed the first Regius Professor of Mathematics at Oxford. Wiles is also a 1997 MacArthur Fellow.
Sir Isaac Newton was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author who was described in his time as a natural philosopher. He was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment that followed. His pioneering book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, first published in 1687, consolidated many previous results and established classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for formulating infinitesimal calculus, though he developed calculus years before Leibniz.
Isaac Todhunter FRS, was an English mathematician who is best known today for the books he wrote on mathematics and its history.
Roger Cotes was an English mathematician, known for working closely with Isaac Newton by proofreading the second edition of his famous book, the Principia, before publication. He also invented the quadrature formulas known as Newton–Cotes formulas, and made a geometric argument that can be interpreted as a logarithmic version of Euler's formula. He was the first Plumian Professor at Cambridge University from 1707 until his death.
The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) is the UK's chartered professional body for mathematicians and one of the UK's learned societies for mathematics.
Sir Erik Christopher Zeeman FRS, was a British mathematician, known for his work in geometric topology and singularity theory.
Sir Michael James Lighthill was a British applied mathematician, known for his pioneering work in the field of aeroacoustics and for writing the Lighthill report, which pessimistically stated that "In no part of the field have the discoveries made so far produced the major impact that was then promised", contributing to the gloomy climate of AI winter.
Sir John Frank Charles Kingman is a British mathematician. He served as N. M. Rothschild and Sons Professor of Mathematical Sciences and Director of the Isaac Newton Institute at the University of Cambridge from 2001 until 2006, when he was succeeded by David Wallace. He is known for developing the mathematics of the coalescent theory, a theoretical model of inheritance that is fundamental to modern population genetics.
Sir Roy Malcolm Anderson is a leading international authority on the epidemiology and control of infectious diseases. He is the author, with Robert May, of the most highly cited book in this field, entitled Infectious Diseases of Humans: Dynamics and Control. His early work was on the population ecology of infectious agents before focusing on the epidemiology and control of human infections. His published research includes studies of the major viral, bacterial and parasitic infections of humans, wildlife and livestock. This has included major studies on HIV, SARS, foot and mouth disease, bovine tuberculosis, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), influenza A, antibiotic resistant bacteria, the neglected tropical diseases and most recently COVID-19. Anderson is the author of over 650 peer-reviewed scientific articles with an h-index of 125.
Sydney Goldstein FRS was a British mathematician noted for his contribution to fluid dynamics. He is described as: "... one of those who most influenced progress in fluid dynamics during the 20th century."
Dame Frances Clare Kirwan, is a British mathematician, currently Savilian Professor of Geometry at the University of Oxford. Her fields of specialisation are algebraic and symplectic geometry.
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 and approximately 200 postgraduate students in total. 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.
John Francis Toland is an Irish mathematician based in the UK. From 2011 to 2016 he served as Director of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences and N M Rothschild & Sons Professor of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge.
Endre Süli is a mathematician. He is Professor of Numerical Analysis in the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, Fellow and Tutor in Mathematics at Worcester College, Oxford and Adjunct Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford. He was educated at the University of Belgrade and, as a British Council Visiting Student, at the University of Reading and St Catherine's College, Oxford. His research is concerned with the mathematical analysis of numerical algorithms for nonlinear partial differential equations.
Sir Martin Hairer is an Austrian-British mathematician working in the field of stochastic analysis, in particular stochastic partial differential equations. He is Professor of Mathematics at EPFL and at Imperial College London. He previously held appointments at the University of Warwick and the Courant Institute of New York University. In 2014 he was awarded the Fields Medal, one of the highest honours a mathematician can achieve. In 2020 he won the 2021 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics.
Gui-Qiang George Chen is a Chinese-born American-British mathematician. Currently, he is Statutory Professor in the Analysis of Partial Differential Equations, Director of the Oxford Centre for Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations, and Director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Partial Differential Equations at the Mathematical Institute, and Professorial Fellow at Keble College, located at the University of Oxford, as well as Life Member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge.
Robert Sinclair MacKay is a British mathematician and professor at the University of Warwick. He researches dynamical systems, the calculus of variations, Hamiltonian dynamics and applications to complex systems in physics, engineering, chemistry, biology and economics.
Michael Richard Edward Proctor is a British physicist, mathematician, and academic. He is Professor of Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics at the University of Cambridge and, since his election in 2013, the Provost of King's College, Cambridge and school governor at Eton College.
Caroline Mary Series is an English mathematician known for her work in hyperbolic geometry, Kleinian groups and dynamical systems.
Julia Rose Gog is a British mathematician and professor of mathematical biology in the faculty of mathematics at the University of Cambridge. She is also a David N. Moore fellow, director of studies in mathematics at Queens' College, Cambridge and a member of both the Cambridge immunology network and the infectious diseases interdisciplinary research centre.
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