The Annual Collingwood Lecture

A generous bequest has allowed the Department to institute an annual lecture in memory of Sir Edward Collingwood FRS. The lectures are given by mathematicians of international renown and are suitable for a general audience. We welcome visitors from other departments and from outside the University.

Professor Alison Etheridge FRS (Oxford University)

"Some mathematical models of evolution"

23 January 2024, 1.00pm, CLC013

Alison Etheridge is Professor of Probability at the University of Oxford where she holds a joint appointment in the Departments of Mathematics and Statistics and a Fellowship at Magdalen College. She was an undergraduate at New College, and divided her graduate study between Oxford and McGill. She then held research fellowships in Oxford and Cambridge and positions in Berkeley, Edinburgh and Queen Mary University of London before returning to Oxford in 1997.

Abstract: How can we explain the patterns of genetic variation in the world around us? The genetic composition of a population can be changed by natural selection, mutation, mating, and other genetic, ecological and evolutionary mechanisms. How do they interact with one another, and what was their relative importance in shaping the patterns that we see today? This question lies at the heart of theoretical population genetics. Whereas the pioneers of the field could only observe genetic variation indirectly, by looking at traits of individuals in a population, researchers today have direct access to DNA sequences, but making sense of this wealth of data presents a major scientific challenge and mathematical models play a decisive role. In this lecture we'll discuss some of the ways in which we can distill our understanding into workable mathematical models.

Edward Collingwood managed the family estate at Alnwick in Northumberland whilst simultaneously having a successful career as a research mathematician. He is probably known best for his work on the theory of Cluster Sets. He gave up a great deal of his time to medical administration and was, in addition, Chairman of the Council of Durham University from 1955 to his death in 1970. Collingwood College, Durham is named after him and the small research library in the Department began from the nucleus of his books, collected works and journals. He was knighted in 1962, elected to the Royal Society in 1965 and became President of the London Mathematical Society in 1969.

The first Collingwood Lecture was given in 1984 by Professor Christopher Zeeman FRS on "The discovery of perspective during the Renaissance". A list of subsequent lectures is given below.

Academic Year	Date	Speaker	Institution	Title
22/23	6 Jun 2023	Professor Christina Pagel	University College London	UK response to the Covid-19 pandemic: the vicious circles, the brilliant science and where science was not enough
18/19	21 Nov 2018	Professor Gwyneth Stallard	The Open University	The beauty of fractals
16/17	16 Feb 2017	Professor Pierre Cartier	Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques	Is there a future for the cosmic Galois group?
15/16	10 May 2016	Professor Ray Goldstein FRS	University of Cambridge	Evolution of Biological Complexity
14/15	26 Feb 2015	Professor Martin Hairer FRS	University of Warwick	Taming Infinities
13/14	30 Jan 2014	Professor Wendelin Werner	ETH, Zurich	Randomness and the continuum
12/13	5 Nov 2013	Professor Peter Higgs FRS	University of Edinburgh	The electroweak symmetry breaking and the Higgs boson
11/12	13 Mar 2012	Professor A. O'Hagan	University of Sheffield	Masters of Uncertainty
10/11	25 Nov 2010	Professor Robert S. MacKay FRS	University of Warwick	The Mathematics of Emergence
09/10	6 May 2010	Professor Sir John Ball FRS	University of Oxford	Mathematics in the Public Eye: the story of Perelman and the Poincaré conjecture
08/09	7 May 2009	Professor David Spiegelhalter FRS	University of Cambridge	Understanding Risk and Uncertainty
07/08	23 Nov 2008	Professor Vladimir Popov	Steklov Institute, Moscow	One and a half centuries of invariant theory
06/07	2 Mar 2007	Professor Tony Sudbery	University of York	Alice and Bob in the quantum wonderland
05/06	10 Mar 2006	Professor Frank Kelly	University of Cambridge	Traffic through Networks
04/05	15 Feb 2005	Professor Vladimir Turaev	University of Strasbourg	Curves and Words
03/04	3 Nov 2004	Professor Jon Keating	University of Bristol	Random Matrices and the Riemann Zeros
02/03	18 Feb 2003	Professor Don B. Zagier	College de France/MPI Bonn	The Experimental Side of Number Theory
01/02	9 Nov 2001	Professor GR Grimmett	University of Cambridge	Diffusion, Finance and Universality
99/00	11 Nov 1999	Professor NS Manton FRS	University of Cambridge	Are Particles Solitons
98/99	23 Nov 1998	Sir Michael Atiyah OM FRS	University of Edinburgh	The Icosahedron Past and Present
96/97	6 Dec 1996	Professor KW Morton	University of Oxford	Can We Trust the Numbers We Get From Our Computers
95/96	5 Dec 1995	Professor M Berry FRS	University of Bristol	Quantum Mechanics, Chaos and the Prime Numbers
94/95	28 Nov 1994	Professor PJ Green	University of Bristol	E is MC Squared: Inference by Throwing Dice
93/94	3 Dec 1993	Dr WBR Lickorish	University of Cambridge	Knots in the Nineties
91/92	24 April 1992	Professor R Penrose FRS	University of Oxford	Magic Dodecahedra and the Mystery of Quantum Entanglement
90/91	26 Feb 1991	Professor DV Lindley	University of Warwick	The Logical Analysis of Experimental Results (with Applications to Tea and Wine)
89/90	13 Mar 1990	Professor JD Barrow	University of Sussex	Why is the Universe Mathematical?
88/89	25 Apr 1989	Professor NH Kuiper	IHES, Paris	Convexity, Knots and Surfaces
87/88	14 Mar 1988	Professor D Williams FRS	University of Cambridge	Probability: Philosophy and Practice
86/87	24 Feb 1987	Dr JS Bell	CERN, Geneva	No Action at a Distance?
85/86	13 Mar 1986	Dr PM Neumann	University of Oxford	The Paris Grand Prix of 1860
84/85	18 Mar 1985	Professor JH Conway FRS	University of Cambridge	Cantor and the Infinite
83/84	3 May 1984	Professor EC Zeeman FRS	University of Warwick	The Discovery of Perspective during the Renaissance

The Annual Collingwood Lecture

The 2023/24 Collingwood Lecture