In this newsletter:

- Latest news
- Browse with Plus
- Mathematical moments
- Live maths

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Latest news from Plus

Brave young worlds - Extrasolar planets have been grabbing the headlines
http://plus.maths.org/latestnews/jan-apr05/planet/index.html


A differential story - Peter D. Lax wins the  2005 Abel Prize
http://plus.maths.org/latestnews/jan-apr05/abel05/index.html


Plus... more news from the world of maths

Young brain solves old problem
http://plus.maths.org/latestnews/jan-apr05/plusmore35/index.html#congruence



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Browse with Plus

Prime numbers

This mini-book by Jack Webster is a brilliant introduction to the theory of
prime numbers. Starting with the definition, he works through the basic
results, with proofs, presents other mathematical proofs which use primes
and introduces the Zeta function.

http://jax.hopto.org/maths/books/prime/


More on primes from Plus:

http://plus.maths.org/issue2/xfile/index.html


http://plus.maths.org/issue22/news/prime/index.html


http://plus.maths.org/issue25/features/whirlpool/index.html


http://plus.maths.org.uk/latestnews/jan-apr05/mersenne42/index.html




About big numbers

No matter how big a number you come up with, this website will tell
you how to pronounce it and write it, and where it occurs in real life.

http://pages.prodigy.net/jhonig/bignum/indx.html


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Mathematical moments

Michael Hartley Freedman - Born 21 April 1951, Los Angeles,
California, USA

Michael Freedman received the Field's Medal in 1986 for proving the
Poincare conjecture in four dimensions. Loosely speaking, the
n-dimensional
Poincare conjecture states that anything that looks like an n-dimensional
sphere really is one. For n=3, this is still an open - and very famous
- problem. For dimensions greater than 4, the conjecture had been
proved in 1961 by Stephen Smale, and Freedman got there for n=4 in
1982.

John Milnor described his work a an "extraordinary tour-de-force".

Freedman currently works at the Microsoft Research Group. He has
received an enormous number of prizes and awards for his work.

"Mathematics is not so much a collection of different subjects as a
way of thinking"


Read more about Michael H Freedman...

from the Mactutor History of Mathematics site:
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Freedman.html


from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Freedman


about the Poincare Conjecture from Plus:
http://plus.maths.org/issue25/news/poincare/index.html

http://plus.maths.org/latestnews/sep-dec04/bascifestreport/index.html


and about mathematical prizes from the International Mathematical
Union
http://www.mathunion.org/medals

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Live maths

If you could teach the world just one thing - To mark the centenary
of Albert Einstein's most famous equation, the
on-line
magazine Spiked has surveyed over 250 scientists and asked them what
would be the one thing they'd teach the world if they could. The
results will be presented at an event at the Royal Institution,
with talks from renowned scientists, as well as short films featuring
those scientists that could not attend.
Tickets are 8 pounds, or 5 pounds concession.

When: Tuesday 10th May, 6.30 pm - 8.30 pm
Where: Royal Institution of Great Britain, 21 Albermarle Street,
London W1S 4BS

For tickets and further information visit the Spiked website at
http://www.spiked-online.com/event/






The London Mathematical Society's Women in Mathematics Day 2005
will be held on the 25th of May.
It is aimed at female mathematicians at undergraduate level or above,
but men are NOT excluded. There will be talks
by women professionally involved in maths and informal discussions.
It's free for students and 5 pounds for everyone else. Register by
email at the address given on the website below.

When: Wednesday 25th May 2005, 11.00 am - 4.30 pm
Where: London Mathematical Society, De Morgan House, 57-58 Russell
Square
London WC1B 4HS
For tickets, program and further information visit the LMS website
http://www.lms.ac.uk/













Happy reading from the Plus team!

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