Rebecca Hoyle facts for kids
Rebecca Bryony Hoyle is a brilliant mathematician who teaches at the University of Southampton. She is a professor of applied mathematics and also helps lead research at the university. In 2017, she gave a special lecture for the London Mathematical Society, called the Mary Cartwright Lecture.
What She Studies
Professor Hoyle describes herself as an interdisciplinary mathematician. This means she uses math to solve problems in many different areas. For example, she studies how things change over time in biology and how people behave in groups.
Her special lecture in 2017 was about Transgenerational plasticity and environmental change. This sounds complicated, but it's about how living things can pass on changes to their children because of their environment. This is part of evolutionary biology.
Her research also looks at other cool topics. She studies how networks change, like how friends connect online (called dynamic network analysis). She also looks at how industries use resources and affect the environment (called industrial ecology).
Professor Hoyle also wrote a book called Pattern Formation: An Introduction to Methods. It was published in 2006.
Her Journey in Math
Rebecca Hoyle studied mathematics at the University of Cambridge. She earned her first degree in 1989 and finished her Ph.D. in 1994. Her Ph.D. project was about how patterns can become unstable.
After her studies, she worked at Northwestern University for a while. Then she returned to Cambridge to teach and do more research. She also spent a short time working at a company called McKinsey & Company. In 2000, she moved to the University of Surrey. Later, in 2016, she joined the team at the University of Southampton.
Awards and Recognition
In 2021, Professor Hoyle won the first-ever Hedy Lamarr Prize. This award is given by the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. It celebrates people who do a great job sharing mathematical knowledge and using math to solve real-world problems.
Professor Hoyle was one of the people who started a group called the Virtual Forum for Knowledge Exchange in Mathematical Sciences (V-KEMS). She won the Hedy Lamarr Prize mainly because of her important role in setting up V-KEMS. She also helped a lot in sharing important math knowledge during the COVID-19 pandemic.
