Abbreviation | MWI |
---|---|
Founded | 2006 |
Founders | Sheila Donegan and Eoin Gill |
Focus | promote awareness, appreciation and understanding of maths through a huge variety of events |
Area served | both parts of Ireland |
Key people | Sheila Donegan Director of CALMAST Eoin Gill Coordinator of MWI Cordula Weiss Programme Manager CALMAST Rosario Burke Educational Resources Manager Diane Murphey Educational Resources Manager Ben Dolan Digital Engagement Manager |
Website | mathsweek.ie |
Maths Week Ireland (MWI) is an annual all-island (Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland) mathematics outreach initiative which takes place throughout Ireland each October. It was founded in 2006 by Waterford Institute of Technology (now SETU) staff members Eoin Gill and Sheila Donegan (based on an idea by Gill), and is a project of that institution's STEM outreach Centre for the Advancement of Learning of Maths, Science and Technology (CALMAST). Gill (an engineer) and Donegan (a chemist) continue to direct and run MWI. [1]
In 2019 MWI engaged over 400,000 people on an island with a population of under 7 million and is arguably the world's largest mathematics festival. [2] [3]
MWI is a partnership of over 50 organizations dedicated to promoting and celebrating mathematics across the island of Ireland, including universities, institutes of technology, colleges, museums, libraries, visitor centres, and other professional bodies. [4] Maths Week Ireland is currently supported by the Irish Government’s Department of Education and Taighde Eireann, Research Ireland (formerly SFI), and the Northern Ireland government’s Department for the Economy and technology company AMD. [5]
MWI targets school and universities, as well as hosting weekend "street fairs" in cities such as Dublin, Belfast and Cork. [4] [6] Events are run by the participants with materials delivered online by Maths Week Ireland. Most schools run their own special activities. Maths Week is a nine-day event (a Saturday to the Sunday of the following weekend, inclusive) which always includes the 16th of October, the day in 1843 when William R. Hamilton discovered quaternions. [2] The idea has been so successful that it has now been replicated in England and Scotland. [7]
MWI hosts the Maths Ireland website which is home to the monthly blogs [8] of the Annals of Irish Mathematics & Mathematicians (AIMM), authored by Colm Mulcahy. [9]
Starting in 2016, MWI has also produced the annual Irish Maths Calendars which are also archived at the Maths Ireland site. [10]
Mathematicians and mathematics popularizers who have been MWI presenters include:
In 2016 MWI inaugurated the annual Maths Week Ireland Award to honor outstanding work in raising public awareness of mathematics. The award is presented during Maths Week Ireland. [18] Awardees so far are:
John Horton Conway was an English mathematician. He was active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory, number theory, combinatorial game theory and coding theory. He also made contributions to many branches of recreational mathematics, most notably the invention of the cellular automaton called the Game of Life.
Martin Gardner was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing magic, scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literature – especially the writings of Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, and G. K. Chesterton. He was a leading authority on Lewis Carroll; The Annotated Alice, which incorporated the text of Carroll's two Alice books, was his most successful work and sold over a million copies. He had a lifelong interest in magic and illusion and in 1999, MAGIC magazine named him as one of the "100 Most Influential Magicians of the Twentieth Century". He was considered the doyen of American puzzlers. He was a prolific and versatile author, publishing more than 100 books.
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Desmond MacHale is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at University College Cork, Ireland. He is an author and speaker on several subjects, including George Boole, lateral thinking puzzles, and humour. He has published over 80 books, some of which have been translated into languages including Danish, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, German, Korean, and Japanese.
Marcus Peter Francis du Sautoy is a British mathematician, Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, Fellow of New College, Oxford and author of popular mathematics and popular science books. He was previously a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, Wadham College, Oxford and served as president of the Mathematical Association, an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) senior media fellow, and a Royal Society University Research Fellow.
Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin is an Irish academic, teacher, broadcaster and high-profile science communicator. She also won the Rose of Tralee contest in 2005 and toured internationally as the lead singer of an Irish traditional music band. In 2022, she was appointed to chair a national forum on biodiversity loss, presenting its report to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in April 2023, and presenting on the topic to a committee of the UN General Assembly later that month.
The University Observer is a broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the campus of University College Dublin, Ireland, once every three weeks.
Science Week Ireland is an annual week-long event in Ireland each November, celebrating science in our everyday lives. Science Week is an initiative of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) It is the largest science festival in the country, engaging tens of thousands of members of the general public in workshops, science shows, talks, laboratory demonstrations, science walks and other science-related events. Science Week is a collaboration of events involving industry, colleges, schools, libraries, teachers, researchers and students throughout Ireland.
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Colm Mulcahy is an Irish mathematician, academic, columnist, book author, public outreach speaker, amateur magician and Professor Emeritus at Spelman College. In addition to algebra, number theory, and geometry, his interests include mathemagical card magic and the culture of mathematics–particularly the contributions of Irish mathematicians and also the works of iconic mathematics writer Martin Gardner.
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Ulrica Wilson is a mathematician specializing in the theory of noncommutative rings and in the combinatorics of matrices. She is an associate professor at Morehouse College, associate director of diversity and outreach at the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM), and a former vice president of the National Association of Mathematicians.
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