personal information   I was born in London on 11th June, 1970. Currently I hold an honorary research position at Exeter University's School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics. I completed a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Kent at Canterbury in 1994. This essentially concerned the embedding of Riemannian manifolds in spaces of compactly-supported distributions. (And here's my undergraduate dissertation, "A Short Survey of Lens Spaces", which I recently unearthed.)

Immediately thereafter, I took a one-year Royal Society European exchange fellowship at Rijksuniversiteit Gent in Belgium. At the conclusion of this, I had published a few minor papers, but had also gradually become disillusioned with academia (particularly with what I saw as the over-specialisation of modern scientific research). Consequently, I left mathematics to pursue other interests.

The following five years were spent travelling, playing a seven-stringed Turkish instrument (the saz), composing, performing and recording music in various contexts, planting trees, investigating a bizarre theory of time and consciousness, setting up an online parapsychology research project, considering possible relationships between Clifford algebras and the ancient Chinese I Ching oracle, and writing a little reference book, among other things.

In the Autumn of 1995, whilst staying in the Spanish walled city of Avila, I suddenly became fascinated by (what little I knew about) the distribution of prime numbers. As my earlier mathematical research had not involved number theory, I had much to learn. However, I became convinced by an overwhelming intuition that there was some fundamental link between (i) the distribution of primes and (ii) the ubiquitous Gaussian (probability) distribution.

I sought to learn more, in order to investigate this possibility. Had I been more thorough in my study of the matter, I would have noticed that P. Erdös and M. Kac discovered such a link back in 1940! However, there is some consolation in the fact that the result in question is far from transparent. In fact the deep reasons for this result seem to have mystified even the great Erdös - Carl Pomerance (Erdös number = 1) has suggested that he might (referring to Einstein's famous proclamation) have said something like this:

(This quote has been misattributed to Erdös himself for many years now.)

In the winter of 1998, having been occasionally contemplating the mystery of the prime distribution for over three years, I was struck by an even more overwhelming intuition about its ultimate nature. My wish to get to the truth of this matter led me back into serious mathematical study, and ultimately to the creation of the number theory and physics archive website.

As my position at Exeter University is honorary, this project is entirely self-funded. In the unlikely instance that you know of any sources of funding for which I might be eligible in order to continue this work, please contact me. Thank you.

Here are a few things I find rather interesting at the moment:

• John McMurtry, "Rationality and Scientific Method: Paradigm Shift in an Age of Collapse"
   
• The fiction of Bruno Schulz
   
• D. Radin, "Time-reversed human experience: Experimental evidence and implications"
   
• Vladimir Z. Nuri, "Fractional Reserve Banking as Economic Parasitism: A Scientific, Mathematical & Historical Expose, Critique, and Manifesto" (serious economists who might take issue with this, check second Q&A on p.57)
   
• The 'Downing Street Memo(s)' - UK and US citizens: please consider writing to your elected representatives to ask what they are doing to have these war criminals removed from office and appropriately dealt with
   
• The Great Conjunction - a mysterious pamphlet jointly authored by the elusive London Psychogeographical Association and the Archaeogeodetic Association, published by Unpopular Books in 1992.
   
• excerpts from astronomer/philosopher Fred Hoyle's novel October the First is Too Late, giving some insight into his deeper thoughts on time and consciousness (which closely mirror my own)
   
• some notes I compiled a while ago on the etymology of the words for 'left' and 'right' in several languages
   
• excerpts from an extraordinary 1977 essay by P.K. Dick
   
• the introduction from the book Phenomena by John Michell and Bob Rickard
   
• John Michell on his discovery regarding the Temple and Old City of Jerusalem
   
• The Garden of Forking Paths - a site dedicated to J.L. Borges, perhaps my favourite writer
   
• Lou Kauffman, "Virtual Logic - Formal Arithmetic": an intriguing, poetic look at the number system via G. Spencer Brown's "Laws of Form", informed by mythology and Taoist thought