Laureation address: Professor Caroline Mary Series FRS
Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science
Laureation by Professor Colva Roney-Dougal, School of Mathematics and Statistics
Tuesday 30 November 2021
Vice-Chancellor, it is my privilege to present for the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, Professor Caroline Mary Series.
Professor Series was an undergraduate at Somerville College, Oxford, and then won a Kennedy Scholarship to study at Harvard for her PhD in Mathematics. She held posts at the University of California in Berkeley and at Newnham College, Cambridge, before taking up a lectureship at the University of Warwick, where she has remained. In 1992 she became one of the very first women to hold the post of Professor of Mathematics in the United Kingdom.
In standard, Euclidean, geometry the angles of any triangle add up to 180 degrees, but there exist other types of geometry, where this is not the case. In hyperbolic geometry we imagine ourselves at the top of a mountain pass: to both sides of us, the ground rises steeply, whilst in front and behind us it drops away. If we were to draw a triangle on the ground just here, we would see that the angles add up to less than 180 degrees, and it is at these heady heights that Professor Series’ work begins.
The shortest paths around these mountain passes need not go in straight lines, and her early work developed a way of describing these paths, encoding them via sequences of symmetries. This encoding is of fundamental importance, having applications to number theory as well as to geometry and dynamics, and led to an invitation to speak at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1986.
After this, Professor Series’ focus shifted to understanding hyperbolic geometries by studying their symmetries, which are much richer than those of standard geometry. This work yields beautiful pictures of fractals, and her famous book, Indra’s Pearls, written with David Mumford and David Wright, both describes the mathematics and contains some gorgeous images. It is aimed at those with no specialist mathematical knowledge, and I highly recommend it to you all.
In addition to her mathematical research and her publications, talks and media appearances popularising mathematics, Professor Series has worked tirelessly to improve gender equality. She was a co-founder of the organisation European Women in Mathematics, and went on to be Chair of the European, and Vice-Chair of the International, Women in Mathematics Committees. She was awarded the Senior Anne Bennett Prize of the London Mathematical Society in recognition of both her outstanding research and her commitment to women in mathematics.
Professor Series has won more awards and prizes than I could possibly list here, so let me single out only a few. Firstly, she is a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the American Mathematical Society. This year, she was awarded the David Crighton Medal by the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and the London Mathematical Society in recognition of her fundamental and beautiful results connecting geometry and dynamical systems and her outstanding service to the mathematical community. Finally, I must also mention her recent service as President of the London Mathematical Society, only the third woman to hold this post.
Professor Series’ contributions to scholarly research, to public communication of science, to the mathematical community and to the support of women in mathematics make her a shining example to us all.
Vice-Chancellor, in recognition of her major contributions to mathematics, I invite you to confer the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, on Professor Caroline Mary Series.