| plus.maths.org

Careers with maths

Preventing avalanches, shaving precious milliseconds off lap-times in Formula One, creating beauty in art, music, fashion and furniture design, testing the powerful engines for new aircraft, planning the Olympics, bringing maths to life on the stage, writing fiction and reporting facts... What do all these jobs have in common? They all use maths!

Our library of in-depth interviews explore the careers of people who use maths in their jobs every day. Browse the library and discover how maths gives you skills that you can use in any career. Maths opens the door onto a wide variety of exciting careers – find out where maths can take you!

Career interview: Scientific data analyst, life science technology

Genomics is one of the fastest moving areas of science and Gavin Harper, a mathematician and statistician, has put himself right at its centre. He works for Oxford Nanopore Technologies, a company which is developing new technology for analysing molecules and sequencing DNA. With 75 employees from 18 different countries and all sorts of scientific backgrounds, Gavin's work environment is nothing like the solitary paper-and-pencil affair traditionally associated with mathematics.

Helen Joyce is a former editor of Plus magazine who now works as a journalist for The Economist. In August she's off to Brazil to be the paper's Brazil Bureau Chief. In between packing and learning Portuguese she has found time to tell Plus all about her varied career and the role maths has played in it.

Francesca Harris has always known she wanted to work in the music or film industry, and she has found that her maths skills have stood her in good stead as she works her way up.

Jose Munoz explains how engineering can allow you to explore the unknown, from understanding how mechanical structures bend to investigating the way genes affect the shape of embryos.

Maths in a minute

Want facts and want them fast? Our Maths in a minute series explores key mathematical concepts in just a few words.

A cute problem goes big

Mathematicians have revived an old approach to solving the famous Riemann hypothesis.
The PEMDAS Paradox

It looks trivial but it keeps going viral. What answer do you get when
you calculate 6÷ 2(1+2)? David Linkletter explains the source of the confusion.
Election special

A mathematical look at democracy.
Celebrating black mathematicians

Cambridge joins Black History Month celebrations with an event showcasing the contributions of black mathematicians.
Our changing picture of gravity

To celebrate the recent centenary of the first major test of Einstein's general theory of relativity, we look back over how our picture of gravity has changed.

Tweets by plusmathsorg