The Adams Society hosts numerous events each year. These include mathematical talks by leading academics in the field, and social events making good use of the historical setting. You can find more about our annual social events at John’s Socials, or check out our Past Events and Photo Gallery.

For in-person events, there is the opportunity to join the speaker and some members of the committee in St John’s Hall after the talks. A form where you can easily sign up to dine in hall if you are not from St John’s should be included in the email for each talk, even if it is not yet linked below. Feel free contact a member of the committee if you would like to book a ticket.

Upcoming and Recent Events

Events 2024–25 can be found here. Remember to sign up to our mailing list to be notified of new events!

Lent Term 2025

Michaelmas Term 2024

Engineering Gravitational Theories

by Dr Alejandra Castro-Anich

Tuesday 3rd December, 5.30pm
Castlereagh Room, Fisher Building
Holography posits a radical way to quantify gravitational physics. It claims that all information of a gravitational theory in a region of space can be encoded by a quantum theory at the boundary of this region. This lecture will discuss quantum gravity from an modern perspective. We will see how one can engineer—i.e. design and build—gravity through this relationship, using possible quantum theories on the boundary as materials for the undertaking. I will discuss how overcoming the challenging obstacles to this engineering task is paramount for deciphering mysterious properties of black holes, and understanding the role of dark energy in cosmology.

Castlereagh Christmas!!!

Sunday 1st December, from 7pm onwards
Boys Smith Room, Fisher Building
Pizza! Drinks! Winding down with your fellow mathmos after a long and hard term!

Nuclear Democracy

by David Stuart

Tuesday 12th November, 5.30pm
Castlereagh Room, Fisher Building
Solitons are solutions of partial differential equations which are localised in space and exhibit some particle-like characteristics. This talk will discuss the quantisation of solitons, and the title refers to their eventual description in quantum theory being similar to that of ordinary particles.

Free Knoops!!!

Tuesday 29th October

An Introduction to Arithmetic Statistics

by Dr Jef Laga

Tuesday 22nd October, 5.30pm
Boys Smith Room, Fisher Building
Arithmetic statistics is concerned with the behaviour of number-theoretic objects in families. Some typical questions are: how often is a number prime? How often is a prime congruent to 1 mod 4? How often does a Diophantine equation have a solution? I will give an overview of this subfield of number theory and take us to the cutting edge of modern-day research.

So, you’re a mathmo? Things could be worse. You could be …

by Dr Piers Bursill-Hall

Tuesday 15th October, 3pm
Main Lecture Theatre, Old Divinity School
Begin the new academic year with a sense of satisfaction and contentment. Yes, you didn’t do all the reading ahead you were going to do this summer (but nobody else did either, despite their hints that they did), but you’re alive and (back) in Cambridge, and you’re not at Trinity. That’s a good start, you have to admit. In this talk I want to tell you about one of the most unpleasant – psychotic, sociopathic – mathematicians of all time: misogynistic, obsessive, paranoid, arrogant, scheming, lying, ill-tempered and cruel, who spent most of his life on the edge of a nervous breakdown … you might even think this sounds like a typical (male, obvs) Cambridge mathmo. But no, he was also at Trinity. You, at least, are not a Trinmo.

Fresher’s Squash

Friday 11th October
Dirac Room, Fisher Building