Termcard for Michaelmas Term 2000

Tuesday 1^st Week
Dr. Robin Wilson (Open University & Keble)
“Stamping Through the Millennium”
Dr. Wilson will cover the past thousand years of mathematics in one hour, illustrating the mathematics an mathematicians in a rather unusual way.

Tuesday 2^nd Week
Dr. Peter Neumann (The Queen’s College)
“What is the next number?”
We’ll start from the sequence 0, 1, 1, 3, 1, 0, 1, 7, … and see where it leads in algebra, number theory and computation.

Tuesday 3^rd Week
Jonathan Jedwab (Hewlwtt-Packard)
“Applying Combinatorial Design Theory”
Combinatorial design theory – in broad terms the study of the arrangement of objects subject to constraints – provides a natural way to express and solve problems in the design of digital communication devices and systems.

Tuesday 4^th Week
Dr. Tony Gardinier (Birmingham)
Mummy, Mummy, Where do Mathematicians Come From?

Tuesday 5^th Week
Prof. Lowell Beineke
“Through the Lurking Graphs”
Prof. Beineke will talk about some games and puzzles involving Graphs.

Tuesday 6^th Week
Dr. Caroline Series (Warwick)
“2250 Years of Tangent Circles”
Problems involving tangent circles were studied by the ancient Greeks and appear on temples in eighteenth century Japan. Now problems involve the link between tangent circles and graphs.

Tuesday 7^th Week
Dr. Simon Singh
“The Cracking of the Cipher Challenge”
Original title & description: “A Brief History of Codes and Code Breaking”
Simon Singh, author of “Fermat’s Last Theorem” and presenter of “The Science of Secrecy” will be recounting stories from the history of codes and code breaking not covered in his Channel 4 TV series, and also answer the questions: how can shaving your head guarantee secure communication and how safe is your credit card on the internet?

Tuesday 8^th Week
Invariants Christmas Party