These will go quickly - if you can join me on 3rd Dec in London, then grab a free ticket quickly.

A new paper with Bogdan Georgiev, Javier Gomez-Serrano, and Adam Zsolt Wagner: "Mathematical exploration and discovery at scale" arxiv.org/abs/2511.02864. Further discussion is at terrytao.wordpress.com/2025/11/05/m...

If it can cook potatoes, it can cook you!

Do you take your work home with you? It's kinda hard to avoid if you are a mathematician. The maths just follows you wherever you go. Sam Howison prepares vegetables.

Now published in Phys. Rev. E doi.org/10.1103/5l56...

Modelling bulk mechanical effects in a planar cellular monolayer arxiv.org/abs/2505.23935

New paper!💡 Amir Ohad developed this nifty setup to measure weak forces generated by freely moving plants, based on the deflection of a pendulum (straw from the cafeteria 😎), which does not require any tethering of the plant: academic.oup.com/jxb/advance-... Plant-obstacle interactions here we come!

Independent researcher fellowships (non-tenure track) at OIST, with a focus on broadly defined theory www.oist.jp/research/bur...

🧪⚛️ Here is a terrific research opportunity at OIST. Basically a Principle-Investigator position that prepares advanced postdocs for tenure-track faculty positions in Japan or abroad. Deadline is 30 November 2026. I know OIST well - an excellent research environment. www.oist.jp/research/bur...

New paper with @math-martens.bsky.social on "Multiple timescale dynamics of network adaptation with constraints" now available Open Access in Chaos: doi.org/10.1063/5.02...

Before then, I'm chairing two excellent @greshamcollege.bsky.social lectures this week - 'Music of Animals' with the awesome Milky Mermikides (www.gresham.ac.uk/whats-on/mus...) and then @helenczerski.bsky.social on Oceans (www.gresham.ac.uk/whats-on/liq...). Both free to attend or watch online.

Our review paper on nonequilibrium physics in the brain is now out in Physics Reports! doi.org/10.1016/j.ph...

The freedom to go for it for three years? Our Hooke and Titchmarsh Fellowships in pure and applied mathematics give you the space to follow a research path of your choice, a path that has proved instrumental in the careers of many previous fellows. Details: www.maths.ox.ac.uk/vacancies

How does the 🧠 process information? In this review we show how to use the tools of non-equilibrium thermodynamics to understand brain dynamics in discrete and continuous state spaces Great work led by Ramon as part of his PhD kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F...

We just advertised the Hooke Fellowships for exceptional researchers (typically after their first post-doc). You are completely free to set up your own research agenda for three years. RT please my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

The illusion of illusions One of the oldest myths in human history is that the Parthenon was cleverly built with curves so that it looks straight, to correct some visual illusions In this paper I demonstrate that there are NO optical corrections in the Parthenon arxiv.org/abs/2510.16831. [1/n]

👏👏

James, ManyThanks for cleaning the board after your lecture (just before mine)

DO LOOK UP! Fascinating research on collective motion by Christiana, a new Hooke Fellow in Oxford.

You'd think all Olympic athletics tracks would be the same. And even if they aren't, as long as they are 400 metres, it won't affect the results. But you'd be wrong on both counts. Amandine Aftalion explains. @cnrs.fr

Another very nice example of monohedric soft tiling. academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Talking Maths in Public is the UK's network for people who communicate maths to the public in any format - writing, speaking, video making, podcasting and performing, and a bunch of other ways too. Find out more and join our network at https://tmip.uk

Oh joy, this is wonderful. And a great choice for the recipients. I had a great chat with Michel at the Helgoland quantum centenary: he's such a modest guy.

Scientists have often too little faith in maths, but some time too much faith. In his 1934 book "Le Vol des Insectes", Antoine Magnan, a zoologist and aeronautical engineer concluded that, based on aerodynamics and mathematics, insect flight was impossible. Yet, they fly.

That sinking feeling. In our latest foray into the mathematics of the kitchen, Sam Howison is chained to the kitchen sink. Quite right. Only another 170 or so episodes to go.

I am super excited to announce that we have a tenure-track faculty position in biophysics open in the Department of Physics at Carnegie Mellon! 🧪 Interfolio link: apply.interfolio.com/174360 PLEASE, share widely across the blue skies! Let me briefly explain what we're looking for: 1/10

Another graduation in the Sheldonian today in Oxford. (started in 1670). With parents around, it is a good day to check the almost universal law that boys are taller than their mother.

Come fly with us, let's fly, let's fly away. Full details: www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/74169

Great song from Tom Lehrer courtesy of Gillian Grindstaff and Oxford Math. " I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics: Plagiarize" www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCr-...

What's it like round here? What are the people like? What do they do when they are not doing maths? Do they have fun? Films about people who also do maths. @joshuabull.bsky.social

Our exploration of heat transfer in the umbilical cord is now online at doi.org/10.1098/rsif...

What did you have for breakfast this morning? A couple of slices of toast perhaps? Great, but a little more burnt than you wanted? It often happens, doesn't it. Blame maths. Sam Howison sets off the smoke alarm.

On this week: The Shape of Hands: Symmetry, Chirality and Handedness with Prof Alain Goriely 👉 gres.hm/shape-hands The Great God Pan: Lord of the Wild with Prof Ronald Hutton 👉 https://gres.hm/god-pan Lessons from Guantánamo Bay with Prof Clive Stafford Smith JD 👉 https://gres.hm/gitmo

This Tuesday 16 September, I will give my first Gresham Lecture of the year in London. The theme this year is the Geometry of Nature. I will start with one of my favourite subjects: Chirality. If interested, you can join in person or online www.gresham.ac.uk/speakers/pro...

I find the authors' restraint remarkable. Rather than jumping on sensationalist claims "We found life on Mars", they lay down very clear arguments about its possibility and what is needed to prove it. Really beautiful scientific argument. Do read the original paper! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Great fun with Josh

This is a very nice paper that answers a simple question that we have been pondering for years: Can you represent the dynamics in regions connected by pipes by a much simpler network? Very important for toxic proteins in the brain. The answer is yes, but you have to do it properly.

When we talk about mathematicians, we often try to show what they looked like. Here is a short list of famous mathematicians/scientists with no known portrait (AFAIK): Pythagoras (c. 570–495 BCE) Zeno of Elea (c. 490–430 BCE) Al-Khwarizmi (c. 780–850) Nicole Oresme (c. 1320–1382) 1/2

Brilliant work Ramon (and Roger), well done. Anyone interested in Helmholtz-Hodge decomposition and its generalizations should have a read.

I'm thrilled that our paper "Personalised regional modelling predicts tau progression in the human brain" is finally published in PLoS Biology! Here's a short thread about the main findings of the paper...

For more details, please check out the paper! A huge thanks to my coauthors @alaingoriely.bsky.social @jwvogel.bsky.social @alexapb.bsky.social @saadjbabdi.bsky.social @biofinder.bsky.social (and others not on Bluesky) for helping to get this over the line.

Accumulation of aggregated tau shows a complex spatio-temporal pattern during #AlzheimersDisease, but why? @pavanchaggar.bsky.social @alaingoriely.bsky.social &co describes #TauProtein dynamics in AD, showing stage-specific shifts in production & transport @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4kNA6vX

Applied math at its best.

Love is a tendril perversion.

Free Public Lectures. World-Leading Speakers. Since 1597. Every year, we bring lectures from renowned academics to the public – free of charge. Sign up to our mailing list to be the first to hear about our 2025/26 programme: gres.hm/newsletter #GreshamCollege

It appears from the picture that the new synthetic genome will be made out of left-handed DNA.

Great Collab. Well done Yuqi.

Today 6pm: The Deceived Brain: Coding and Illusion Watch free via: gres.hm/deceived-brain Prof @alaingoriely.bsky.social* reveals how simple, optical & aural, geometric illusions can be modelled mathematically, shedding light on how we process information *also of @oxfordmathematics.bsky.social

This is a new one "Dear Professor Goriely ChatGPT selected you as an appropriate reviewer of the paper copied below." Maybe ChatGPT can also write the review, since it is already doing the job of the editor (and presumably wrote the paper). Let's take the human element out of science completely

Scientists love to use the expression "emergent behaviour" when they talk about complex systems (as I do) But what it means is not clear As a way to start a conversation, here is a definition: a behaviour is emergent if it cannot be easily guessed through naive reasoning. What is your definition?