Mike Jeffrey – Professor of Applied Mathematics
I describe what I do as “geometrical asymptotics”. I research the fundamental mathematics behind the qualitative features of our world, usually through singular and discontinuous phenomena, particularly in dynamical systems. The mathematics needed to understand how life and technology interact. The reasons why the world is not, and never will be, entirely predictable.
A smooth world would be a boring one. Ours is full of discontinuities and singularities, jumps between different behaviours, kinks where one model or other breaks down.
Discontinuities arise from simple things like decision making, or any kind of biological/electronic regulation. They both arise from, and create, singularities. Singularities both arise from, and create, things you wouldn’t expect, with unexpectable outcomes . . .
Nonsmoothland 