Tickets are free, registration opens one month before the lecture.
Discussion
Thu
15
Oct 2026
Gresham in the North Public Lecture
A History of the World in Four Algorithms
Professor Sarah Hart
Algorithms are fundamental to the story of mathematics – they’ve been around for over four thousand years. A theorem may prove that a solution to a problem exists, but an algorithm gives you the directions to actually find it.
This lecture explores four key algorithms that have not just shaped pure mathematics, but have found unexpected applications in areas as diverse as nuclear physics, film-making, medicine, and music.
About the speaker:
Sarah Hart is a Fellow of Gresham College. She was Gresham Professor of Geometry from 2020-24, the first woman to hold this chair since its creation in 1597. She was also Gresham’s Acting Provost between March and December 2025. She is Professor Emerita of Mathematics at Birkbeck, University of London and was elected as a Fellow of Birkbeck in 2024.
Professor Hart studied at Oxford and Manchester, gaining her PhD in 2000. Postdoctoral research and teaching followed and she was appointed to a lectureship at Birkbeck in 2004. Her academic publications have been mainly in the area of pure mathematics known as group theory, which can be thought of as the mathematical study of symmetry. She became Professor of Mathematics at Birkbeck 2013, and served in various management roles including as Programme Director, Assistant Dean, and Head of Economics, Mathematics and Statistics. She served as President of the British Society for the History of Mathematics (BSHM) for three years from 2021-2023, and President of the Association of Mathematics in Education (AMiE) for 2026-7.
About Gresham:
Gresham College has been providing free public lectures since 1597 when Sir Thomas Gresham’s vision of a college to bring the ‘new learning’ to Londoners was realised. Today we carry on Sir Thomas’s vision, bringing some of the world’s most brilliant minds to speak in fields ranging across the arts and sciences. Now in a special partnership with St John’s College, a series of lectures by leading experts is coming to Durham.
