Alain Goriely

It is a great piece. Soft and filling.

It's funny how in space all intuition about basic stuff - like water - goes out the window

The coolest math object is now in space.

Our inaugural Regius Professor of Mathematics, Andrew Wiles, retires in 2026 (not that mathematicians ever truly retire) and we are looking for his successor, starting in October of that year.

Full details: www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/74751

most def

Introducing Pluto, a small, hungry cat and, like all his fellow Aristocats, an optical superhero.

Everyone wants to be a cat.

You never know who'll you meet round here. People working in functional analysis or probability, mathematical physicists, applied mathematicians trying to model our environment, to name just a few. All of us hanging out in the same building. Come and join us: www.maths.ox.ac.uk/vacancies

A multiscale growth atlas of Arabidopsis: linking cell dynamics to organ development Plant development depends on coordinated growth at cellular and organ scales, yet comparative analyses are hindered by inconsistent reporting of growth across studies. We conducted a meta-analysis o.....

How fast do plants actually grow? And which growth processes matter most for organ size?
We dived into 176 papers, extracted and re-analyzed the data so you don’t have to!
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
@newphyt.bsky.social @virajalim.bsky.social @elvisbranchini.bsky.social

🚨PREPRINT

Coarse-graining diffusions with discrete-state approximations is an easy and effective way to build stochastic models from observed trajectories, but how valid is this approximation?

arxiv.org/pdf/2511.05366

We focus on this problem, with an emphasis on the nonequilibrium steady-state.

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

Mathematical exploration and discovery at scale AlphaEvolve is a generic evolutionary coding agent that combines the generative capabilities of LLMs with automated evaluation in an iterative evolutionary framework that proposes, tests, and refines ...

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.

Great clip!
Now I will have to go and read the Lighthill report on AI.

*James

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

Height perturbation in three cellular monolayers

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!

Buribushi Fellowship

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

Buribushi Fellowship

🧪⚛️
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...

Multiple timescale dynamics of network adaptation with constraints Adaptive network dynamical systems describe the co-evolution of dynamical quantities on the nodes and the dynamics of the network connections themselves. For de

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...

Music of Animals **We are currently undertaking some website upgrade work. If you have any difficulty watching the live stream above please follow along on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3Qzdum7CQ8**

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: There are no optical corrections in the Parthenon One of the oldest and most enduring myths in human history is the belief that the Parthenon was cleverly designed with various curved structures and sizes in order to correct optical illusions, and th...

Read my papers, look at buildings around you, use your critical sense, and decide for yourself it the myth makes sense. [n/n]

arxiv.org/abs/2510.16831

Historically, it was proposed by Vitruvius, 400 years after the Parthenon, in a few opaque sentences that have generously been translated in the 19th Century to match the romantic ideas that Greek builders had perfect knowledge of mathematics, art, and perception.

Yet the myth persists

[7/n]

Despite being repeated everywhere, these myths have no scientific foundations (either the illusions do not exist or are imperceptible). No such illusions has been reported in the thousands of buildings built since then with perfect straight lines. [6/n]

Yet another popular myth is that figures and inscriptions have different sizes so that they appear the same size

[5/n]