Ever-shrinking spheres
Techniques from random sphere packing predict the dimension of the Apollonian gasket, a fractal made up of non-overlapping hyperspheres.
Press
Maths of mortality
Like Orpheus in the Underworld, the London Institute is challenging mortality, says our writer Thomas W. Hodgkinson in The Sunday Telegraph.
press
Yang’s Springer podcast
In an interview with Springer, Yang discusses his research moving between mathematics, physics, and AI, and his life, in between cultures.
press
Immortality maths
Is there an advantage to ageing? Should we populate space? Is it fun to be a physicist? The London Institute talks to the Takeaway podcast.
Papers
Genetic computation
The structural and functional building blocks of gene regulatory networks correspond, which tell us how genetic computation is organised.
Website
Who we are, updated
Our new About section describes our story, research, communication, funding, home in the Royal Institution and organisational intelligence.
perspectives
History repeats itself
The Royal Institution supported scientists fleeing 1930s authoritarianism. Now, thanks to our Arnold Fellowships, history repeats itself.
Papers
AI classifies space-time
A neural network learns to classify different types of spacetime in general relativity according to their algebraic Petrov classification.
Events
The OS of life
Breakthroughs in cell programming are kicking off a biological analogue of the silicon revolution, allowing us to predictably engineer life.
Events
Accelerating innovation
The London Institute and the Ditchley Foundation host an afternoon discussion and drinks on the science of innovation and how to speed it up.
perspectives
From Russia with math
History suggests our new posts for physicists and mathematicians from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus will have an enduring impact on UK science.
News
Arnold Fellowships
In support of those affected by the war in Ukraine, we have created five new Fellowships for scientists from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Papers
Learning Hilbert series
Neural networks find efficient ways to compute the Hilbert series, an important counting function in algebraic geometry and gauge theory.
Papers
The rules of life
The bipartite nature of regulatory networks means gene-gene logics are composed, which severely restricts which ones can show up in life.
perspectives
Designing web design
To mark our Webby nomination, we describe the design principles behind our website and how they evolved in tandem with the Institute itself.
News
Webby Award Nominee
Our website has been nominated for the best science website in the Webby Awards—hailed the “internet’s highest honor” by The New York Times.
News
Cell programming portal
The London Institute is creating a portal that connects bit.bio and theorists to accelerate research on the mathematics of cell programming.
News
The power of presence
One reason that we outperform other research centres is that everyone turns up for work, which makes us more creative, agile and aligned.
Papers
Line bundle connections
Neural networks find numerical solutions to Hermitian Yang-Mills equations, a difficult system of PDEs crucial to mathematics and physics.
Events
Quantifying AI
Peter Cochrane talks about how quantifying machine intelligence, distinct from biological intelligence, can quell the debate on AI’s future.
Papers
Calabi-Yau anomalies
Unsupervised machine-learning of the Hodge numbers of Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces detects new patterns with an unexpected linear dependence.
Events
Cell programming maths
The London Institute and bit.bio host a two-day international meeting to unravel the theory of cell programming at the Royal Institution.
News
Benchmarking research
To better benchmark research at the London Institute, we weight our published papers by the fraction of authors that are at the Institute.
Events
LonTI lecture series
During spring, the London Institute hosts weekly lectures in theoretical physics for young researchers who are interested in new fields.
Events
Theory of Everything
Professor Yang-Hui He tells the captivating story of the holy grail of science: the mathematical quest for a unifying theory of everything.
Papers
Beyond classical barriers
Circuits of memristors, resistors with memory, can exhibit instabilities which allow classical tunnelling through potential energy barriers.
News
Stone on stone
In our updated landing page, we let our blackboards do the talking: each blackboard illustrates a key concept from one of our best papers.
website
A year to remember
In 2021, we hired new talent, wrote pioneering papers and moved into Faraday's rooms at the Royal Institution. Here we celebrate the highs.
press
What the Dickens?
Our writer Thomas W. Hodgkinson argues that Charles Dickens named his novel David Copperfield in honour of the Royal Institution.
WEBSITE
Unifying mathematics
Our new fifth research theme contains projects that explore how different branches of mathematics are intertwined, and how to unify them.
News
12 Days of Christmas
The Institute’s Christmas card includes one side to the Möbius strip, five exceptional Lie groups and eight basis vectors of the octonians.
Events
Talking to Penrose
Sir Roger Penrose talks about physics, philosophy and art in a conversation with Thomas Fink and Yang-Hui He in the Faraday lecture theatre.
Events
Science of storytelling
Prof. Alison Woollard explores the science of storytelling and storytelling in science—a neglected virtue in modern scientific research.
News
Winter board meeting
At its winter meeting, our Board discusses our research output, endowment with Caltech, core funding and supporting the Royal Institution.
Events
Garden of challenges
In a video for The Garden, Yang-Hui He describes the top 23 mathematical challenges of our time, including a possible theory of everything.
News
Inaugural Junior Fellow
Dr Forrest Sheldon is the London Institute’s inaugural Junior Fellow, setting a high standard for our new programme of Junior Fellows.
NEWS
Measure what matters
We benchmark the London Institute by the quality of our published research papers, which we are increasing each year by a factor of √2.
WEBSITE
Our guide to journals
Our updated handbook of physics, mathematics and general science journals is a unique guide to choosing the right home for your paper.
PERSPECTIVES
Why we must boldly go
The human impulse to look beyond the horizon, “to boldly go where no man has gone before”, leads us to the most transformative discoveries.
Papers
Going, going, gone
A solution to the information paradox uses standard quantum field theory to show that black holes can evaporate without violating the laws of physics.
Papers
Quick quantum neural nets
The notion of quantum superposition speeds up the training process for binary neural networks and guarantees that their parameters are optimal.
Projects
Learning the universe
Using machine learning to search the vast space of 10-dimensional geometries for ones that predict the Standard Model from string theory.
Events
Cheers, Brits and Yanks
Princeton and Caltech alumni celebrate Faraday’s birthday at the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences, inside the Royal Institution.
Events
In search of serendipity
The London Institute is hosting a lunch at the Royal Institution to promote serendipity between leaders in business, finance and physics.
Papers
Tumour infiltration
A delicate interplay between the proteins that white blood cells express and the molecules on the surface of tumour cells determines cancer prognoses.
Events
Maths and machines
Conrad Wolfram describes how two brothers harnessed machines to do mathematics, changing the way we think about computational thinking.
Events
Space-time singularities
Sir Roger Penrose talks about space-time singularities and cyclic geometry at the Nankai Symposium, after an introduction by Yang-Hui He.
News
Autumn board meeting
At its autumn meeting, our Board discusses our application for core funding, a new Fellow, upcoming events and planning our first endowment.
books
Calabi-Yau Landscape
This new monograph makes cutting-edge topics in mathematical physics, geometry and machine learning accessible to graduate students and beyond.
Events
Mathematical Dialogues
Yang-Hui He co-organises the Nankai Symposium on dialogues between mathematics and physics, with the plenary talk by Sir Roger Penrose.
press
Debating basic science
Thomas Fink and Dallas Campbell discuss curiosity, basic science, science communication and the Royal Institution on The Spectator podcast.
Papers
Dessin d'enfant
Groethendieck's “children’s drawings”, a type of bipartite graph, link number theory, geometry, and the physics of conformal field theory.
people
Welcome, Yang
Welcome to our new Fellow, Yang-Hui He, who does research in algebraic geometry, string theory, quantum field theory and machine learning.
Website
Keeping the lights on
Now that our website uses progressive web application technology, it's resilient to drops in connection and it continues to work offline.
Events
Greek week
What is the limit to human achievement? To find out, we sent a team to a Greek island for a week to immerse themselves in a single problem.
Papers
Cancer and coronavirus
Cancer patients who contract and recover from coronavirus-2 exhibit long-term immune system effects, depending on the type of cancer.
Press
Challenging Times
Is free will a mathematical problem? How about immortality? Or the quest for AI? The Times reports on our 23 Mathematical Challenges.
PERSPECTIVES
23 challenges
To mark the launch of ARIA, which aims to tackle the toughest problems, we made a list of the top 23 mathematical challenges of our time.
Papers
The physics of finance
Statistical physics contributes to new models and metrics for the study of financial network structure, dynamics, stability and instability.
PERSPECTIVES
Science of showing up
Showing up for work makes organisations more intelligent, because it let’s workers switch between focus and interaction in an unplanned way.
News
Summer board meeting
At its summer meeting, our board meets our new finance director and discusses fundraising, core funding, research output and 23 challenges.