Special talk Vicky Neale
Dr Vicky Neale is the Whitehead Lecturer at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and a Supernumeracy Fellow at Balliol College. Her job is to enthuse about mathematics to undergraduates, school students and the wider public. Her first book, external page Closing the Gap: the quest to understand prime numbers was published in October 2017. Vicky has experience of giving talks and leading workshops for a wide range of audiences. (Source: https://www.bcme.org.uk/Plenary-Speakers)
Vicky Neale gave her talk on 20 March 2019.
Closing the Gap: the quest to understand prime numbers
Description: Prime numbers have intrigued, inspired and infuriated mathematicians for millennia and yet mathematicians' difficulty with answering simple questions about them reveals their depth and subtlety.
In this talk, which shares its title with her new book, Vicky will describe recent progress towards proving the famous Twin Primes Conjecture and the very different ways in which these breakthroughs have been made – a solo mathematician working in isolation, a young mathematician displaying creativity at the start of a career, and a large collaboration that reveals much about how mathematicians go about their work.