Public Lecture: From Prime Numbers to Random Networks: Two perspectives on researching Pure Mathematics

To celebrate the International Day of Mathematics, join us for these special lectures by two Pure Mathematicians from the School of Mathematics and Statistics. There will be time for audience Q&A with the speakers, and we will host a networking reception following the talks with finger food and refreshments. All welcome.

The lectures:

Puzzles and patterns in the primes - Christian Bagshaw

For thousands of years, mathematicians have been fascinated by prime numbers. As far as our records indicate, it was Euclid who first provided a proof that there are infinitely many primes. This curiosity has continued into the modern age, leading to more nuanced questions. Are there infinitely many primes that end with the digit 7? What about pairs of primes that differ by two - how many of those are there? Can every even number be written as the sum of two primes? This talk will touch on some of these fascinating problems and provide a glimpse into what a number theory PhD student works on all day.

Random networks, random walks and other stories - Catherine Greenhill

We live in a world filled with large, complex networks, such as social networks, contact networks or transport networks. A network consists some objects (e.g. people, cities) and the relationships between them (e.g. friendship, train lines). Researchers who study a particular real-world network often want to compare their network to a family of networks that share similar properties. We can do this using random networks, where the connections are chosen randomly in some way. I will talk about some of my research on random networks, and the (random?) choices that led me here.