Profile

Andrew Hone
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About Me:
I live just outside Canterbury with my wife and three (big) children. I like listening to all kinds of music, from drum ‘n’ bass to Thomas Tallis, dancing, singing and going for walks in the countryside. I love stories of all kinds – fact and fiction; science is one of the best stories around, and I’m lucky to be able to tell some of that story.
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I grew up in London, then went to school in Canterbury to be near my grandparents. When I was young I liked languages and creative writing at school, and my teacher said I didn’t know my times tables properly. I got into studying maths and science when I was a teenager, from reading science fiction novels and popular science: I was fascinated by the weirdness of black holes and quantum physics. Eventually I became a mathematical physicist: I did my BA degree at Oxford, then a PhD at Edinburgh, both in Mathematics, but in my doctorate I was lucky to be able to take graduate courses in Theoretical Physics at the same time, including my first course in quantum field theory taught by Professor Higgs (who later won the Nobel prize when his particle was discovered). After that I briefly studied at the Landau Institute in Russia, before going to Rome to do postdoctoral research. I got married in Italy, where our first child was born, and not long afterwards we moved to Adelaide (Australia), where I had another research post. Eventually we moved back to the UK, and after being unemployed for a few months and doing lots of job interviews, I got offered my first lecturing position in Canterbury. I have worked there ever since, apart from sabbaticals in Cambridge and Sydney, where I recently spent two years living with my family.
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My pronouns are:
he/him
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My Work:
I use ideas from physics in number theory and algebra.
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If you study physics, then you’ll know that you need to use maths to write down things like Newton’s laws of motion. I started out my career in mathematical physics, working on the equations that describe special types of water waves called “solitons”, which don’t spread out like ripples on a pond, but travel in lumps that keep their shape and speed when they move, a bit like small particles or packets of energy that appear in quantum physics. I’ve also worked on equations that describe immune cells in biology – how your body reacts if you get an infection. Nowadays my work goes in the opposite direction in some sense: rather than taking equations that apply to physics, I take ideas from physics (like conservation of energy) and use them to help get a handle on hard maths problems to do with numbers and algebra.
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My Typical Day:
Since the recent lockdowns my routine has changed a lot: I tend to start thinking about maths when I wake up, have a late breakfast, then go for a walk, and start writing equations or doing computer calculations around midday. I might talk to one of my colleagues or students on Zoom, then cook myself a late lunch, and either read some papers, give a lecture or listen to an online seminar in the afternoon. Then after dinner I will often be typing up results or solving equations until midnight or beyond, so then I will wake up late again the next morning – unless I have an appointment or have to drive one of my children somewhere!
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Throughout most of my career I was lecturing to students in the morning/afternoon, and usually doing the school run first thing, so when my kids were small I got up early to make them a big breakfast before they went out every day. Now they are all teenagers/young adults and look after themselves more: my elder daughter is about to start her 3rd year of university, and my son has just finished A-Levels and will start university this autumn, so only my younger daughter still needs a lift. In the past six years I have had a research grant that bought out my teaching time, so I have been working on my own maths projects more or less full time. This has also left me free to travel round the world working with other mathematicians. So I travelled to China a few times to give lectures, as well as Spain and Japan, and moved to Sydney with my family for nearly two years, to work with colleagues there and in Melbourne. This has allowed me to have a much more varied schedule. The recent lockdowns have meant changing to online seminars and chats with student, and also meant that I tend to get up later and work late in the evening instead of the morning. Also this has made me realize that I don’t need to travel so much, as I can get a lot of things done just as well by connecting via Zoom and email; but I do miss chatting to my friends face to face.
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What I'd do with the prize money:
I am preparing a project called “The Quest for Huge Primes” with the Institute for Research in Schools (IRIS) https://researchinschools.org/ This aims to give young people in schools the opportunity to take part in real research projects with academics in universities, and my project is about the mathematics that underpins modern cryptography, especially problems in number theory to do with finding factors of big numbers and generating large prime numbers. I plan to develop an online crowdsourcing app called CLIPS (Chebyshev-Lehmer Internet Prime Search) which will allow any member of the public to discover a huge prime number while their computer is idle (like a screensaver), and IRIS will get students in UK schools involved in researching the best way to do this, and contributing their own methods and computer code if they wish. They can also just learn about how this maths is used in everyday applications like secure online shopping, banking and encrypting messages.
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Education:
1977-1985: Dulwich College Preparatory School, London
1985-1990: King’s School, Canterbury
1990-1993: Balliol College, Oxford University – B.A. Hons. Mathematics (1st Class)
1993-1997: University of Edinburgh, PhD Mathematics
1997: Landau Summer University, Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, Russia
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Qualifications:
1987/1988: O-Levels (Mathematics, Latin, French); GCSEs (English Language, English Literature, History, Classical Civilization, Design & Technology, Physics, Chemistry, Biology); AO-Levels (Mathematics, French) – all grade A
1989: AS-Level (English Literature) – grade B
1990: A-Levels (Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry) – all grade A; S-Level (Mathematics) – grade 1
1993: B.A. Hons. Mathematics (1st class), University of Oxford
1997: PhD Mathematics, University of Edinburgh
1997: Cosmology exam, Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics – excellent grade
2002: Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education, University of Kent
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Work History:
July-August 1992: Phone researcher, Audience Selection (Market Research), London
Jan-June 1997: Postgraduate teacher/researcher, School of Mathematics & Statistics, University of Edinburgh
1997-1998: Leverhulme Trust Study Abroad Studentship, Ricercatore (postdoctoral researcher), Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy
1999-2000: Australian Research Council UK IREX International Research Fellow, University of Adelaide, Australia
2000- : Temporary Lecturer in Applied Mathematics, University of Kent; made permanent, 2002; Senior Lecturer, 2005; Reader, 2007; Professor of Mathematics since 2010.
Long stay participant at the Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge (2001, 2009); scientific visitor at CIC, Cuernavaca, Mexico (2002), and MFO, Oberwolfach, Germany (2010); Visiting Lecturer, Notre Dame, USA (2011); Visiting Professor at: La Trobe, Melbourne, Australia (2012)’ Roma Tre, Rome, Italy (2013, 2014); Chinese University of Mining & Technology/Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China (2017, 2019); University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (2017-2019).
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Current Job:
Professor of Mathematics
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Employer:
University of Kent, Canterbury.
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Music-loving maths boy
What did you want to be after you left school?
I was just happy to keep on doing more Maths, and I never stopped...
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Yes - my friend fell asleep in a bush after we had a party outside school, but I came back and ticked his name off on the register, so we both got into trouble when a member of the public found him there.
If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?
Rock star
Who is your favourite singer or band?
Prince
What's your favourite food?
Szechuan hotpot
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
1. To perform a big rock concert for all my friends and family. 2. To have a second honeymoon with my wife. 3. To have perfect health (unfortunately I've had a lot of illness in the past few years).
Tell us a joke.
How do you spot an extrovert mathematician? They stare at your shoes, instead of their own.
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