Distinguished Lecture Series
The Rankin and Sneddon Lectures
The then Department of Mathematics held Colloquium talks for many decades, inviting speakers to talk to a general mathematical audience about their research, and speakers such as Prof Sir Michael Atiyah (Edinburgh), Prof Persi Diaconnis (Stanford) and Prof Jon Baez (California, Riverside) gave talks.
After the School of Mathematics and Statistics was formed, the School launched its Rankin-Sneddon Distinguished Lecture Series in Mathematics, named after two of the major figures in the history of mathematics in Glasgow in the 20th Century:
- Prof Robert Rankin (appointed in 1954, retiring in 1982);
- Prof Ian Sneddon (appointed in 1956, retiring in 1985).
Recent Rankin-Sneddon Lectures (in pure and applied mathematics)
- 2023 Prof Ursula Martin CBE FREng FRSE
University of Edinburgh / University of Oxford
The Social Machine of Mathematics - 2023 Prof Akshay Venkatesh FRS
Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ
Fourier interpolation and the Weil representation - 2022 Prof John Hinch, FRS
University of Cambridge
Oldroyd B, and not A?
Recording available - 2022 Prof Douglas Ravenel
University of Rochester
What is the telescope conjecture? A walking tour of modern homotopy theory
Recording available - 2021 Prof Alfio Quarteroni
Politecnico di Milano and EPFL, Lausanne
The Beat of Math
Recording available - 2021 Prof Robert Guralnick
University of Southern California
Finite Simple Groups - Classification and Applications - 2020 Prof Carlos Matheus Silva Santos
CNRS, Paris
Billiards - 2020 Prof Robert MacKay, FRS FInstP FIMA
University of Warwick
How directed is a directed network?
The Bowman Lectures
The annual Bowman Lecture aims to highlight the crucial importance of statistics, and the mathematical sciences more generally, in addressing issues of public importance. The speakers and subjects are chosen to connect as closely as possible with issues which are both topical and high profile.
The lecture series was established as the result of a generous donation from an anonymous donor. It is named after Emeritus Professor Adrian Bowman who served on the staff of the Department of Statistics, and subsequently the School of Mathematics and Statistics, from 1986 to 2020, including a term as Head of School (2014-18).
Recent Bowman Lectures
- 2022 Prof. Sir Paul Collier
University of Oxford
Left Behind: How poor places can get trapped, and how they can catch up
Recording available - 2021 Chris Stark & Keith Bell
UK Committee for Climate Change
The Path to Net Zero: data, evidence and policy
Recording available - 2020 Prof Christl Donnelly CBE FRS FMedSci
University of Oxford and Imperial College
Understanding Infectious Disease Transmission and Control
Recording available - 2019 Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter FRS
University of Cambridge
Trust in Numbers
The Mitchell Lectures
This lecture series was founded in 1925 through an endowment generously established by Sir George Arthur Mitchell, a prominent Glasgow industrialist and a graduate of the University. The endowment reflected the importance Mitchell attached to good use of statistical methods within the business community. At various times, the endowment has been used to support the appointment of staff within the University but in its most recent form it has allowed statisticians of the highest international prominence to be brought to the University for high profile visits to give public lectures and to interact with staff and research students.
Upcoming Mitchell Lecture
- 2023 Prof Huixia Judy Wang
The George Washington University
Semiparametric approaches for studying extreme conditional quantiles
Recent Mitchell Lectures
- 2022 Prof Alexandra M. Schmidt
McGill University
Modelling non-Gaussian spatio-temporal processes
Recording available - 2021 Prof Christopher Wikle
University of Missouri
Some Examples at the Interface of “AI” and Dynamic Statistical Models for Complex Environmental and Ecological Data
Recording available - 2019 Prof Brendan Murphy
University College Dublin
Clusters everywhere: A tour of cluster analysis and its application