26/10/2026
🌟 WEEK 12: WEEKLY MATHS TALK 🌟
📄 Title: Do Quantum Spheres Spin under a Starry Sky? Entries from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Mathematical Physics
📣 Speaker: Richard Nicotra
🗓️ DATE: Thursday 29th October 2026
⏰ TIME: 1pm
📍 LOCATION: F07.03.373.Carslaw Building.Carslaw Lecture Theatre 373
Description: Buried beneath the rigour and the algebra lie perfectly simple geometric ideas, waiting for the enterprising mathematical hitchhiker to rediscover them. This first in a series of talks will unpack the daunting concept of spinors, something that appears to be an ordinary complex vector yet obeys an opaque set of algebraic rules with strange consequences. Nevertheless their origins lie in a remarkably simple idea which originates in ancient Greece. So join me for this highly visual talk, suitable for anyone with a background in high-school geometry and first-year linear algebra and complex numbers, as I pull back the curtain on spinors and reveal their inextricable connection to the night sky.
Bio: Richard Nicotra is an honours student in applied mathematics at the University of Sydney. He enjoys taking complicated systems apart, studying each piece closely, and putting them back together until the structure underneath becomes clear and easy to explain. This applies as much to machines as to mathematics: at thirteen, he spent six months teaching himself C++, then another six building 8-bit computers out of redstone in Minecraft, all to understand how computers really work. An alumnus of the Special Studies Program and the Dalyell stream, Richard completed eight research projects across mathematics and physics during his undergraduate degree, and now works mainly in mathematical physics, at the intersection of dynamical and integrable systems, asymptotic analysis, partial differential equations and geometry. He plans to begin a PhD after his honours year to continue his research journey. Along the way he has collected a fair few beautiful ideas from various corners of mathematics and physics, and he loves nothing more than sharing them. Outside academia, he enjoys reading, cooking, swimming, languages and linguistics, and playing the piano.
