The Adams Society ran another highly successful year, engaging Johnian mathmos with interesting speakers and social events. Due to the commendable work of the committee, we welcomed a larger audience from across the university to our talks, by our first appearance at the Freshers’ Fair, improved mailing lists, and a new website.

The year commenced with the Freshers’ Squash in the infamous triple set in Second Court – the first of many opportunities for different years in St John’s to get together.  Michaelmas was a busy term with four excellent talks, three by Johnians: Sir John Ball from Oxford introduced students to some interesting facts in the calculus of variations; Dr Quentin Berthet gave a talk entitled ‘Small Mathematics for Big Data’; Dr Austen Lamacraft gave an interactive lecture on the combinatorics underlying models of random growth;  and Dr Rob Hall explained his work using autonomous underwater gliders to study waves. For Christmas, we had another action-packed mathmo party, including a sack race past puzzled porters.

In Lent, Prof Richard Weber spoke about his research in rendezvous search games; Dr Julia Goedecke gave a fascinating and accessible introduction to category theory; and Dr Anthony Ashton talked about the remarkable properties of solitons. On the social side, we enjoyed the company of Prof John Toland, Director of the Isaac Newton Institute, for our annual dinner, in which the Presidents’ speeches featured possibly the first public rap performance the Combination Room has seen.

The Adams Society Garden Party was another success. Despite being set back by some unfortunately timed rain, we were able to get the barbeque running and had a pleasant afternoon of Pimms and croquet, with acapella from the lovely Over the Bridge. Although we showed a strong fighting spirit against the Trinity Maths Society in the annual cricket match, we were narrowly beaten once again, but made up for it with a stunning performance against the Hyperbolics, beating them 8-5 in a game of football.

As the Presidents, we would like to heartily thank the committee for sharing the privilege of shaping one of the oldest student societies in Cambridge. It has been the greatest pleasure, and we wish next year’s committee all the best.

“Ain’t no party like a mathmo party…”

Maria Tang and Ömer Taştemur, Presidents 2015-2016

You can view other Presidents’ reports here.