Behind the Scenes: Professor James Maynard

Join Professor James Maynard FRS, for a ‘behind the scenes’ insight into his world-leading research in number theory.

In 2022, Professor Maynard was awarded Mathematics’ highest honour – the Fields Medal – in recognition of his ‘spectacular contributions to analytic number theory’. In the most basic terms, number theory is study of whole numbers and how they interact with one another under addition and multiplication. Although these might seem the most basic of mathematical operations, Professor Maynard’s research has helped explicate some of the complex phenomena that the addition and multiplication of whole numbers creates. In particular, his research has led to major advances in the understanding of the structure of prime numbers and the often-unusual distribution gaps between them.

In this, ‘behind the scenes’ talk, Professor Maynard will offer an insight into the research processes of a world-leading mathematician, sharing what it means to make new discoveries in a field that has been studied for millennia.

During Professor Maynard’s talk, audience members will be invited to take a short (approx 5 minutes), live forecasting survey using Mentimeter. Anonymised responses will be used for research purposes and will be discussed during the event to illustrate how audience expectations compare with the speaker's experience.

About the series:

The 'Behind the Scenes' seminar series was co-founded by Dr Séverine Toussaert (Fellow for Research at St John’s College, University of Oxford) and Dr Vatsal Khandelwal (University of Exeter; DPhil Economics, Oxford 2024). This series explores the research process itself, i.e., how projects evolve, what challenges arise, and how researchers overcome them, through conversations with leading academics across disciplines.