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In this newsletter: - Latest news - Browse with Plus - Mathematical moments - Live maths ********** 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 ********** 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 ********** 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 ********** 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! ********** If you received this message you have subscribed yourself to the PLUS-ANNOUNCE mailing list via our website. If you do not wish to remain on the list please visit http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa.exe?SUBED1=plus-announce&A=1 and follow the instructions to leave the list. If you have any comments on this newsletter, or Plus Magazine, please contact us at [log in to unmask] - we are always happy to hear from our readers! Feel free to forward this email to anyone you think might be interested.