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At the time of writing this editorial, the IMA London and South East Branch, which I have had the privilege of chairing since 2016, has just screened a film profiling the life of the first woman ever to be awarded the Fields Medal, the Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani [1]. For organising the screening, much credit must go to my colleagues at Imperial: John Craske MIMA, Ioanna Papatsouma FIMA and Davoud Cheraghi. The film was followed by Davoud quite bravely fielding audience questions because he and Maryam were both undergraduates at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran at the same time, albeit in different year groups.

As a mathematician at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (part of the UK Ministry of Defence), it is difficult for me to talk in detail about my role. However, when given the opportunity to write this editorial, I wanted to highlight the significant contribution mathematics makes to Defence.

We welcome Heather Tewkesbury as the IMA President for 2026 and 2027. Heather is Chief of Strategic Relationships at the Smith Institute and was CEO from 2017 to 2023. She is actively involved in our community and has previously held various roles within the IMA, including as Vice President for Professional Affairs and Industry from 2010 to 2013.

Can art and mechanics come together to teach mathematics? A group of Senegalese high school students think so thanks to a hands-on harmonograph project.

In 1965, the one-year-old IMA launched the Journal of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications to publish scientific papers in four issues a year, on topics representative of what might be called traditional British applied mathematics. Analytical methods, mostly asymptotic in nature, were applied to problems in theoretical mechanics, often in continuum mechanics. Almost all the papers were single authored by UK-based applied mathematicians. Sir James Lighthill¹ FRS, inaugural President of the IMA, made many contributions to the early volumes, predominately pieces that shed light on fundamental properties of wave motion and fluid mechanics.

I have been reflecting on my recent appointment in July 2025 as Editor of Mathematics Today, taking over from Rob Ashmore CMath CSci FIMA who had been in post since just before the pandemic in 2019. (My thanks for doing an excellent job, Rob; I’m very glad you are sticking around!) I realised that I was certainly not the first incumbent in this role who did not study mathematics as an undergraduate. Indeed, both the much missed David Broomhead and Edward Stansfield, two of the editorial board chairs under whom I served, initially studied chemistry and electrical engineering, respectively, before focusing on applied mathematics. So when I took up this role, having served the board continuously since late 2008, I did not feel particularly out-of-place, in fact the board has always welcomed quite a diverse crowd.

Introduction

It is 5am on 10 April 2025 and I am stood, bathed in moonlight, on the slopes of Two Tree Hill¹, waiting for the Moon to align with the 700-foot tall long-wave antennae at Wychbold. As I wait, I ponder the mathematics that has led me to stand at this location, at this moment, confident that in 25 minutes the setting Moon will sit between the antennae and let me capture this image.

The 187th European Study Group with Industry (ESGI) saw about 100 researchers descend on the University of Bristol in July. The participants and problems addressed spanned the whole of the mathematical sciences – including physical applied mathematics, pure mathematics, statistics, operations research, data science and machine learning/AI – reflecting the rich diversity of expertise that ESGI brings together.

The IMA held its online Celebration of Mathematics Projects on Friday 25 July 2025. This was the second such nationwide competition, the first being last year as part of the Institute’s programme of events for its 60th anniversary. Every university in the UK was invited to submit the student who had been awarded the highest mark for their final-year undergraduate project.

From an early age, I knew I saw the world differently. While I struggled to decode phonics or remember the order of letters, I could visualise mathematical structures with ease. Logic made sense when language often didn’t. But because I excelled in maths, the idea that I might be dyslexic (see box below) was regularly dismissed.

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Hot on the heels of the IMA Council and Annual General Meeting on 25 June 2025, the IMA awarded its Gold Medal to Professor I. David Abrahams FRSE CMath FIMA. The Gold Medal is awarded every two years for outstanding contributions to mathematics and its applications over a number of years. David, like previous winners, exemplifies this. Throughout his career he has brought together the pure and the applied sides of the mathematics community to tackle challenges.

The Christoper Zeeman Medal was awarded to Brady Haran on 7 May 2025 (see the recording on the IMAmaths YouTube channel). The Medal is awarded every two years by the IMA and its sister society the London Mathematical Society (LMS) for the promotion of mathematics to the public.

The Isaac Newton Institute’s (INI) recent two-day event on Inclusivity in the Mathematical Sciences (Cambridge, March 2025) proved to be a powerful gathering of minds committed to embedding equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) at the very heart of mathematical practice, culture and governance.

Sipping a fresh cup of tea and digesting Peter Rowlett’s editorial from the June 2022 issue of Mathematics Today (MT), I recall my attempts to define what is meant by ‘maths communication’. Peter Rowlett CMath FIMA was my predecessor in the role of Vice President, Communications for the IMA, and he continues to influence maths communication with great enthusiasm across the UK. From his content creation and media appearances to the networks of mathematicians he facilitates, Peter is what I would call a ‘maths communicator’ – out there communicating maths to the public, a key part of the IMA’s mission.

Mathematics has not always been the domain of scholars. In fact, there are many historical studies on mathematical practitioners and their methods. Why were people trying to use quantification and measurements in civil life? How were they doing it? Were these methods – especially for the early modern period – actually efficient?