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My career journey

Pure Mathematics is a subject studied for its own sake, not because of applications. For many years, pure mathematicians were interested in computers only as a tool for writing papers containing strange symbols like integral signs, and Greek letters. In 1992 I founded, together with Silvio Levy and Klaus Peters, "Experimental Mathematics", the first journal in the world devoted to the use of computers to solve pure mathematical problems. With colleagues I published, also in 1992, a book "Word-processing in groups", in which algorithms, fundamental in computer programs for editing text like Microsoft Word, were instead applied to solve certain significant problems in abstract group theory (a subject in every mathematics degree). The subject, called "Automatic Group Theory" in our book, started to be presented in postgraduate mathematics courses around the world.

I first started working with Nasir Rajpoot (Director of the TIA Centre) because of my interest in a new advanced microscope. I had the idea that some clever mathematics might help interpret experimental data from this complex machine, when studying diabetes in mice. Image processing skills were essential. I enjoyed getting to know several of Nasir's Ph.D. students, including Shan Raza (now Associate Professor within the TIA Centre), from whom I learned more than I taught. Later, having given up teaching, I was free to attend the lab where Nasir's many students worked on problems in image processing, and I had many interesting discussions. My name was included as author in several research papers because of my mathematical input.

Highlights

1990-1991 Scientific Director of Geometry Center at University of Minnesota
1991 Minor participation in production of video explaining the geometry of knots:
2004 Became Fellow of the Royal Society
2012 A question from Sam Jefferyes, one of Nasir's Ph.D. students, resulted in the use of Fast Fourier Transform in Digital Pathology

My current work

I have been working for the last year with Daryl Cooper (Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, University of California at Santa Barbara) on a way of dealing efficiently with digital three-dimensional images. We have been learning and developing the theory, and hope to start writing code soon. We are hoping that this will be useful in digital pathology, once 3D-imaging of tissue is better developed and more common.

My hobbies and interests

I am interested in spending time with family and friends, in politics, in holidays, and in books (with a special interest in maths books).