These are your important living mathematicians

Earlier in the month, as I reported in 'Who are your important living mathematicians?', The Times' Eureka magazine celebrated science with a list of "the 100 most important people in British science and engineering".

I asked the question: where are the mathematicians? Andrew Wiles is top, at #41. Simon Donaldson is #75. Marcus du Sautoy is #76. (Further details.)

So, I wondered, why so few mathematicians? Mark Henderson asked: Who are the mathematicians that are missing? And I asked you:

If you were asked for examples of "important" (set your own criteria) living UK mathematicians, who would you offer?

Well, here are the recommendations I got:

Tim Gowers

Timothy Gowers FRS is Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. He received the 1998 Fields Medal for research connecting functional analysis and combinatorics and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1999. He is known for his well read blog, Gowers's Weblog, and for a post 'Is massively collaborative mathematics possible?', which started the polymath project.

Christopher Zeeman

Sir Christopher Zeeman FRS is Honorary Professor at the University of Warwick. Zeeman was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1975. As well as work in research on geometric topology and singularity theory, Zeeman is well known in mathematics for presenting the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 1978. This was the first time the lectures were presented on mathematics and they are cited by many mathematicians as their childhood inspiration to study mathematics further and inspired the Royal Institution Mathematics Masterclasses, which reach around 3000 students across the UK annually. He is also known for founding the Mathematics Department at the University of Warwick. The Christopher Zeeman Medal for Communication of Mathematics was named in his honour and first awarded in 2008 to Ian Stewart.

Michael Atiyah

Sir Michael Atiyah OM FRS FRSE is known for research in topology, geometry and analysis and, as a former President of the Royal Society (1990-5) and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2005-8), an influential figure in the mathematics community. Among many awards, he won a Fields Medal in 1966 and the Abel Prize for outstanding scientific work in the field of mathematics in 2004.

Roger Penrose

Sir Roger Penrose OM FRS is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford. A mathematical physicist, he is well known for work completed with Stephen Hawking, for series of popular books and within mathematics for a set of tiles for non-periodic tiling which carry his name.

Although The Times' was a UK list, I also received recommendations for the following who are based outside of the UK:

John Milnor

Described by @haggisthesheep as a god of topology, John Milnor is Professor of Mathematics and Co-Director of the Institute for Mathematical Sciences at Stony Brook University. He received the Fields Medal in 1962 for work in differential topology. Milnor is also recognised for work bringing mathematics to a wider audience with what his 2004 Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition citation called "sublime elegance".

Terence Tao

Terence Tao FRS is Professor of mathematics at the Department of Mathematics, UCLA. Tao has wide ranging interests - his webpage describes his work as "primarily in": harmonic analysis, PDE, geometric combinatorics, arithmetic combinatorics, analytic number theory, compressed sensing, and algebraic combinatorics. An Australian, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2007. He keeps a well read blog, 'What's new', on which he discusses his research as well as open problems and other topics in mathematics, and is an administrator of The Polymath Blog, a massively collaborative mathematics initiative.

John Conway

John Conway is an English mathematician living and working in America as von Neumann Professor at Princeton University. Conway works in game theory, geometry, topology, group theory and provocative work in theoretical physics on free will. He has contributed to many branches of recreational mathematics, particularly through interaction with Martin Gardner, and is noted as the inventor of the Game of Life. Conway was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1981 and, as author of several books, was awarded the 2000 Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition, the citation for which notes: "his joy in mathematics is clearly evident in all that he writes".

John Baez

John Baez is a Professor of mathematics at the University of California, Riverside, where his work is in the mathematics of fundamental physics. Currently he is spending two years at the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore where, his website explains, he will "think about technology and the global ecological crisis." From 1993 to 2010 he wrote a well read column "This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics" and now writes the successor, Azimuth, on which he says he plans to talk about topcis from "math to physics to earth science and biology, computer science and the technologies of today and tomorrow – but in general, centered around the theme of what scientists can do to help save a planet in crisis."

Donald Knuth

Described by this biography as the "Leonard Euler of computer science", Donald Knuth is a researcher in mathematical techniques for analysis of algorithms, Professor Emeritus of the Art of Computer Programming at Stanford University, creator of the TeX typesetting system and author of the multi-volume work in progress The Art of Computer Programming.

Thanks to @haggismaths, @Gelada and @Tony_Mann for suggestions.

An appeal, for Samuel Hansen

First, you may want to watch the "MATH/MATHS LIVE" video and listen to the 2nd promo. Afterwards, you may want to watch Samuel Hansen's response, in which he demonstrates how truly delusion he has become.

Math/Maths Week!

Since June, Peter Rowlett and Samuel Hansen have been recording a weekly transatlantic chat about mathematics news called the Math/Maths Podcast. Peter is the "maths" side of the conversation from Nottingham, England, and Samuel is the "math" side from Las Vegas, USA. In November 2010 Samuel will visit Peter in Nottingham for a week of UK-based mathematical activities.

I posted a listing on my website of our activities during that week and how you can get involved if you're interested: Math/Maths Week! I hope to update it as I get further information.

Math/Maths Podcast Live Recording

In November, Samuel Hansen will visit the UK for, at least, MathsJam, the 13th IMA Early Career Mathematicians Conference, a tour of maths and computing history in Nottingham and... a live recording of the Math/Maths Podcast at the University of Greenwich. (That's live in the sense of "before an audience", rather than "streamed live".)

We're planning an afternoon at Greenwich, including a talk of what we learned on our maths & computing history tour, the podcast ("LIVE!"), a walk to and round the Greenwich Royal Observatory and a trip to a nearby watering hole.

To advertise this, I put together a poster. If you are in the area I would encourage you to put this up to help advertise the talk. This is a PDF on scribd and there are a couple of links to download or print a copy. Click to enlarge:
Meanwhile, Samuel Hansen has been hard at work and has produced a video to advertise the event too:

Update: Math/Maths Week!.

Web resources for a 14 year old girl struggling with maths & confidence

Yesterday on Twitter I asked a question that had been asked of me: "Help: looking for web resources for 14 year old girl struggling with maths, particularly fractions, & maths confidence."

I love Twitter for this kind of thing. People are so helpful. I am grateful to @SteelingSeconds, @Samuel_Hansen, @fittdr, @Domestic_jules, @ColetteWeston, @nick4glengate and @christianp for their answers. Also huge thanks to the following, who retweeted my question: @UKRC, @Hel_TCW, @kunglu, @Mwmyn, @afriquanwoman, @MoreUtterPiffle and @Loiscarter. Here are the responses I got:

The Khan Academy

Recommended by @SteelingSeconds and @Samuel_Hansen, The Khan Academy is a set of free videos explaining maths topics at a variety of topics, with a corresponding set of exercises. Here's a description from the website:

The mission of the Khan Academy is to provide a world-class education, for free, to anyone in the world. It consists of 1700+ (and growing) videos on YouTube covering everything from basic arithmetic to advanced calculus, chemistry and biology, along with a series of exercises that allow students to practice and assess their knowledge at their own pace.

Since my specific question was about fractions, here is an example of multiplying fractions:

Primary Resources: Maths

Although it goes back to Primary Maths, @fittdr suggests Primary Resources and says she "found it to be good revision for my kids". The site describes itself as "Free lesson plans, activity ideas and resources for primary teachers." For example, here is an exercise sheet on adding and subtracting fractions.

BBC Bitesize

@Domestic_jules and @ColetteWeston both recommend BBC Bitesize, a site which covers KS1-KS4 in England. The site has a series of reading material, activities and quizzes for self-testing. For example, here is a link to the KS3 fractions section.

nrich

@Domestic_jules also recommends nrich, a site with hundreds of classroom resources indexed by topic. For example, this Fractions Jigsaw.

MyMaths

@nick4glengate says his 13 year old likes the MyMaths website. This is a subscription service. There are some free samples available on the website, for example this game on ratios.

Mangahigh

@christianp says Mangahigh "really is very good". Backed by Marcus du Sautoy, the website says:

Mangahigh is the first maths games site to teach the UK National Curriculum entirely through games. Our unique, curriculum-compliant maths casual games go beyond the scope of any maths games previously developed, and inspire incredible enthusiasm in students.

The fractions game is Flower Power.

Who are your important living mathematicians?

Paywall notwithstanding, you may have seen today the Times' Eureka magazine celebrating science with a list of "the 100 most important people in British science and engineering". With apologies for decisions made and promise of causing "some debate" from the Editor.

So the question is: where are the mathematicians? Andrew Wiles is top, at #41. Simon Donaldson is #75. Marcus du Sautoy is #76. There are a few 'almost rans'* but I think that's it for mathematicians listed for their mathematics.

So, being a partisan modern thinker (no Renaissance men here) I wonder: why so few mathematicians? Of course this raises questions, and Mark Henderson is right to ask: Who are the mathematicians that are missing? (And, really, how many mathematicians should we expect?)

Whether you read it or not, if you were asked for examples of "important" (set your own criteria) living UK mathematicians, who would you offer? Answers in comments or to @peterrowlett please! I'll read out your answers and ask this question again on the Math/Maths Podcast 17 when we record it on Monday.

* The 'almost rans': Stephen Hawking is #3, but is listed as "cosmologist and best-selling author". Simon Singh is #33, mostly as a libel reformer and, despite his excellent Fermats Last Theorem and status as a friend of mathematics, not a mathematician. Iain Lobban is at #12, again not a mathematician but GCHQ, which he Directs, is noted as a large employer of first-rate mathematicians. Adrian Smith is at #70. He's a statistician but listed as a civil servant and outspoken critic on science education (and, incidentally, as "former wPrincipal [sic] of Queen Mary, University of London").

Ed & me

Here's an update. If you didn't read 'Is Ed Miliband a "maths geek"?' now is a good time.

So I didn't get a reply from Ed, nor from anyone with concrete knowledge of his maths geek status. (Though I am grateful to @ColinTGraham, @MitchKeller, @Tysess and @stecks for re-tweeting my question to him.) But here are some more snippets I've learned.

Ed studied economics at Oxford and the LSE, and taught economics at Harvard on sabbatical from the Treasury. However, there are more and less mathematical ends of economics. Somehow, I hope his "maths geek" status is more than that.

Ed does seem to have had a flair for mathematics in school. He and his brother David went to Haverstock school, from where the Camden New Journal has teacher Oscar Gregan, who taught David mostly and Ed a little, paraphrased as saying that Ed's "reputation in the staffroom was that of being something of a number-crunching genius" and quotes him saying "David was not a natural, geeky mathematician – Ed was more like that". "Later", claims the Scotsman, "it was his speed at mental calculations that caught Gordon Brown's attention".

So the question is: Does a childhood talent for "number-crunching", good mental arithmetic and an academic pursuit of economics translate into maths geekery?

There's a tantalising piece of information that seems to point Ed to the geeky end of the spectrum: the BBC quotes Robin Blackburn remembering meeting Ed as a child and saying "Ed amazed me by being able to do the Rubik's Cube... in one minute 20 seconds and, as I recall, just with one hand too." If true, this hints at excellent geek potential.