Meet the Mathematicians

A look back at the free outreach day that brought sixth formers into a real maths research conference, and where you can still watch the talks.

Meet the Mathematicians was a one-day event for Year 12 and 13 students (S5 and S6 in Scotland) who were thinking about studying maths at university, or a subject that uses a lot of it, like physics or engineering. This page is our own write-up from public records. Meet Maths is not connected to the people who organised the event.

What happened on the day

The day ran alongside the British Applied Mathematics Colloquium (BAMC), the biggest yearly meeting of applied maths researchers in the UK. Students got a taste of that world:

• Talks from research mathematicians about maths in the real world, from radar and sport to medicine and risk.
• A lunchtime with stalls, puzzles, a maths trail and a prize quiz.
• A chance to talk to researchers and university students about what studying maths is really like.

It was free, places were first come, first served, and parents and teachers were welcome too.

Who ran it

The events were run by the maths departments at the Universities of Manchester and Southampton, with a small grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) that ran from 2008 to 2012. Each year the day was hosted by the university holding that year's BAMC.

Past events

• 2009, University of Nottingham. The first event we know of. One of the talks was on the geometry and pigmentation of seashells.
• 2010, Edinburgh. 7 April at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, organised by the Maxwell Institute (the Universities of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt).
• 2011, University of Birmingham. 11 April, with speakers including Simon Singh and John Barrow.
• 2012, University College London. Held with BAMC 2012 in late March, with speakers including David Spiegelhalter, Anne Juel, Linda Cummings and Christian Böhmer.

We couldn't find any later events. For years the event's website simply listed the next date as "TBA", and the domain was later allowed to lapse.

Watch the talks

Many talks were filmed and are still free on the Meet the Mathematicians YouTube channel. Good ones to start with:

• What can I do with a mathematics degree? - a short interview, and the most watched video on the channel. There's also the full talk. For an up-to-date view, see our careers page.
• The maths of luck, coincidence and tragedy
• A short history of radar
• Maths and sport
• Einstein's relativity

Similar things you can do now

• Maths Inspiration runs live maths lecture shows for teenagers, plus an all-day Maths Fest aimed at sixth formers. It's the closest thing to Meet the Mathematicians today.
• University taster days and summer schools. Most maths departments run something for Year 12, so check the outreach pages of the universities you like.
• The Advanced Maths Support Programme runs enrichment events for sixth formers.
• UKMT challenges, if you enjoy hard problems.

Last updated October 2026.