Public and Schools Lectures
Details of our programme of free public and schools lectures for 2008/9 will be posted below soon - we update this list and add new lectures regularly. If you would like to receive an email notification about future lectures and events please join our MMP events mailing list.
Meanwhile, you can also listen to the Plus podcast.
The Secret World of Codes and Codebreaking
Monday 6th October 2008, 11.00 - 12.00 pm
Nadia Baker
Millennium Mathematics Project
Venue: Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Clarkson Road, Cambridge
Ever since the ancient Greeks, people have been using secret codes to keep their communications private. Nadia Baker, from the Enigma Project, will be unraveling some of these ciphers and explaining how mathematicians have changed the course of history by cracking codes. She will demonstrate a genuine WW2 Enigma Cipher Machine and explain how the British code breakers at Bletchley Park managed to achieve the apparently impossible by unlocking the infamous Enigma Code.
About the speaker:Nadia Baker studied Maths, Computer Science and Japanese at Adelaide University, Australia. She then travelled and performed in Australia's Science Circus, whilst completing a graduate course in Science Communication at the Australian National University. Following this, she became a teacher and moved to England, where after a spell teaching maths she became the Enigma Project Schools Officer. When Nadia isn't travelling the UK talking about codes and codebreaking, she enjoys running marathons for charity and seeing live performances.
Level: Primary - suggested age range 9 - 13 (KS 2-3)
Lewis Carroll in Numberland
Thursday 23rd October 2008, 5.00 - 6.00 pm
Prof. Robin Wilson
The Open University
Venue: Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Clarkson Road, Cambridge
Charles Dodgson is best known for 'Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland', written under his pen name of Lewis Carroll. If he had not written the Alice books, he would be mainly remembered as a pioneering photographer. But if Dodgson had not written the Alice books or been a photographer, he might be remembered as a mathematician, the career he held as a lecturer at Christ Church in Oxford University. But what mathematics did he do? How good a mathematician was he? How influential was his work? This public lecture by Robin Wilson will try to answer these questions by describing his work in geometry, algebra, logic and the mathematics of voting, in the context of his other activities. This lecture will also demonstrate the many puzzles and paradoxes that he delighted in showing to his child-friends and contemporaries.
About the speaker:Robin Wilson is Professor of Pure Mathematics at the Open University, a Fellow in Mathematics at Keble College, Oxford University, and Emeritus Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, London (the oldest mathematical Chair in England). He has written and edited over thirty books, mainly on graph theory, the history of mathematics, and music.
Level: Open to the general public - suggested age range 16+
Admission to all our lectures is free but by ticket only (unless otherwise marked): please email us stating clearly the date and title of the lecture you would like to attend and how many tickets you require, and we will confirm your ticket allocation by email. Download a map and directions to the Centre for Mathematical Sciences, where the lectures are held, unless marked otherwise, or see the University of Cambridge's online map. The main entrance to the Centre for Mathematical Sciences is via the footpath off Clarkson Road (running next to the Isaac Newton Institute car park) and then through the CMS gatehouse. This is signposted.
The Millennium Mathematics Project (MMP) is a maths education initiative for ages 5 to 19 and the general public, based at the
University of Cambridge
but active nationally and internationally.
Copyright © 2008. University of Cambridge. All rights reserved.
