The Mathematics of Populations

The day will look at how mathematics was developed for dealing with populations of various types over the past four hundred years. It will trace studies of life expectancy, concerns about exponential growth, and mathematical models in epidemiology; tools now important for bioscience.

Programme

9.30am.           Registration; coffee/tea

10.00am          Introduction & welcome

10.05am          Raffaele Pisano (University of Lille) On Fibonacci and mathematical conceptual streams in context around the12th to 14th centuries in Italy

10.55am          Chris Lewin (Actuary) Counting people before 1800                     

11.45am          Coffee/tea

12.10am          Camilla Colombo (University of Milan): Early probabilistic models: the Bernoulli-d’Alembert disputes on smallpox inoculation

1.00pm            Lunch

2.10pm            Brian Charlesworth (University of Edinburgh) Mathematics and the genetics of populations from 1900-1930

3.00pm            Theresa Smith (University of Bath): Age-period-cohort models and their history                       

3.50pm            Tea/coffee

4.10pm            Mark McCartney (University of Ulster): A chaotic end to the day – Mitchell Feigenbaum, Robert May, and the nonlinear modelling of populations

5.00pm            Course disperses