News from the world of maths

Twisting, Coiling, Knotting: Maths and DNA Replication

The proportions of a DNA molecule in a human cell are equivalent to a 2000-mile-long rope packed inside the Millennium Dome. When DNA replicates, it spins at an astonishing 10 turns per second. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that DNA can become highly twisted, super-coiled and even knotted! To understand this phenomenon, the molecular biologist must grapple with the mathematical concepts of twisting, writhing and knotting. In this highly-illustrated talk Professor Michael Thompson FRS will experiment with strings and rubber bands (bring your own!) to explore the geometrical rules which underlie the transmission our genetic code.

When: Thursday 24th of May 2007, 5pm - 6pm
Where: Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Clarkson Road, Cambridge CB3 0WA
Tickets are free but must be booked by emailing mmptalks@hermes.cam.ac.uk
More information: http://mmp.maths.org/events/eventlist.php

Dinner@Dana: Back to the Big Bang

In honour of the Large Hadron Collider, the Dana Centre is holding an evening dinner and discussion attended by the expert James Gillies from CERN. There'll be slide shows and photographs and a two-course meal inspired by particle physics.

When: 15th of May 2007, 6.30pm - 8.30pm
Where: Dana Centre, 165 Queen's Gate, London SW7 5HE
Tickets: £15 per person, including a two-course meal and a drink. Tickets have to be booked by calling 0207942 4040 or e-mailing tickets@danacentre.org.uk.
Age range: this event is open only to those over 18 years of age.
More information: Visit the Dana Centre site.

Also the Science Museum in London has put on an exhibition in honour of the Large Hadron Collider. The exhibition is free and will run until the 7th of October 2007.

Superstrings - a Musical Journey through Time and Space

You probably knew that Einstein was a great scientist, but did you also know that he played the violin? In this unique double act a virtuoso violinist and the head of the department of particle physics at Oxford University combine the electricity of a live musical performance with an insight into the deepest corners of the Universe. The lecture explores Einstein's life, both in science and in music, from his theories that shaped space and time, to modern ideas in particle physics.

When: 18th of May 2007 5pm-7pm
Where: Science Oxford, 1-5 London Place, Oxford, OX4 1BD
Tickets: £6.50, £4.50 concession, available from The Oxford Playhouse on 01865 305305.
More information: The Oxford Trust

Born: 11th of November 1904 in Madras, India
Died: 8th of May 1960 in Princeton, New Jersey, USA

"He would have been more successful in mathematics if he had been less so at cricket," is what Whitehead's maths teacher wrote about him on his graduation from Eton. Once at Oxford, to which he'd nevertheless gained entry, Whitehead's distraction diversified to include squash, tennis, boxing and poker, at which he reportedly staked large sums of money. Worse, Whitehead did not even seem to want to become a mathematician at first, instead he joined a stockbrokers firm in London on completion of his degree.

But luckily, all turned out well for maths in the end. Working in the City wasn't to Whitehead's taste, and after a detour to Oxford he enrolled for a PhD at Princeton in the US. Here he began to work on two areas which benefitted greatly from his contributions: topology and differential geometry. Both differential geometry and topology deal with surfaces like the sphere or the torus, or their higher dimensional analogues. While differential geometry looks at rigid properties that depend on a metric, for example the curvature of a surface, in topology metric properties are irrelevant. Topologists regard two objects as being the same if you can deform one into the other without tearing. The famous example is that a coffee cup and a doughnut are topologically the same.

Whitehead contributed two major works to differential geometry, now considered classics. In topology he is best remembered for his work on "homotopy equivalence", a central notion when it comes to pinning down whether two objects are topologically equivalent. Notably, Whitehead spent quite some time working on the now famous Poincare conjecture and even thought that he had found a proof. However, an inconspicuous pair of interlinked circles, now known as the "Whitehead link", gave rise to a structure that Whitehead had assumed not to exist. This toppled his proof and the Poincare conjecture was to remain open for another 70 years.

Whitehead also contributed to maths in another, less theoretical way. The percecution of Jews in Nazi Germany troubled him greatly, and he helped a number of eminent mathematicians to escape, including Erwin Schroedinger, one of the founders of quantum mechanics.

Had Whitehead not died suddenly of a heart attack at only 56, he certainly would have gone on to contribute even more.

You can read more

• about Henry Whitehead on MacTutor,
• about topology in Plus,
• and see a picture of the Whitehead link on Wikipedia.

Scientists are currently building the largest machine in the world in order to understand the smallest fragments of our universe. Their insights will throw light on some of the biggest questions there are - how did the universe start, what is it made of, and how will it end? The machine is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and it is buried up to 175m below ground in a huge circular tunnel close to Geneva. To prepare for its inauguration at the end of this year, the Science Museum has put on a special exhibition entitled "Big Bang". The accompanying website tells you all you need to know about the collider and the science behind it. It's accessible for everyone from school age onwards, no previous knowledge required.

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/antenna/bigbang/

You can also read about LHC in the Plus article, Secrets of the universe.

In the Imaging maths series Plus explored how to visualise, transform and unfold strange geometric objects like the Klein bottle or the Möbius strip. Now Plus has come across a British artist who does just that, but without the aid of computers. John Pickering bases his work on one simple mathematical transformation, the inversion in a circle. His works are beautifully intricate 3D objects made up of 2D slices, with each slice and its relationship to the others worked out using honest and rigorous co-ordinate geometry.

Unfortunately, Pickering's work can't be seen on the web, so if you're interested in mathematical art, keep an eye out for one of his exhibitions. Alternatively, there is a book on Pickering's art called Mathematical form: John Pickering and the architecture of the inversion principle, published by the Architectural Association.