The Source of All Wisdom: Robin Chapman's Home Page

I'm a senior lecturer in Mathematics at the University of Exeter. My mathematical interests include number theory, algebra, combinatorics and problem solving. Welcome to my website which is of the old school: no pop-ups, animations or frames, just a couple of pictures and an unrivalled selection of useful links.

This is how I looked on 20th March 1999 when I had more hair than I have now.

My second-round match, where my specialist subject was One Foot in the Grave, was broadcast on Tuesday 18th October. I scored twenty-two points, winning the match (and qualifying for the final) by an all-too-narrow margin of one pass.

The final, where my specialist subject was The Science Fiction Novels of Philip K. Dick, was broadcast on Tuesday 8th November. Alas my luck deserted me, and I scored a paltry seventeen points putting me in sixth place (out of six). It was great fun while it lasted, and I reckon I have just achieved my quota of fifteen minutes of fame!

• Lecture notes:
  • A Guide to Arithmetic
  • Notes on Algebraic Numbers
  • Algebraic Number Theory
• Preprints:
  • Simple formulas for lattice paths avoiding certain periodic staircase boundaries (with Timothy Y. Chow, Amit Khetan, David Petrie Moulton & Robert J. Waters)
    submitted to Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series A
• Miscellaneous articles and surveys:
  • Evaluating zeta(2)
    This gives (so far) fourteen proofs that the sum of the reciprocals of the squares of the natural numbers equals pi squared over six.
  • Constructions of the Golay codes
    So far this is restricted to the binary Golay code. Eight constructions are given.
  • Bertrand's postulate
    This gives a proof of Bertrand's postulate: between each natural number and its double there is at least one prime.
  • The Stickelberger ideal
    A simplification of the proof of Theorem 6.19 in Washington's Introduction to Cyclotomic Fields.
  • Dirichlet's theorem
    A proof of Dirichlet's theorem on primes in arithmetic progressions, relying on real analysis rather than complex analysis.

• Electronic journals:
  • Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science
  • The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics
  • INTEGERS: Electronic Journal of Combinatorial Number Theory
  • Journal of Integer Sequences
  • The New York Journal of Mathematics
  • Séminaire Lotharingien de Combinatoire
  • Theory and Applications of Categories
• Mathematical archives:
  • ArXiv
  • The EMS Electronic Library
• Mathematical organizations:
  • The American Mathematical Society
  • The Australian Mathematical Society
  • The Canadian Mathematical Society
  • The European Mathematical Society
  • The London Mathematical Society
  • The Mathematical Association of America
• Mathematical information servers:
  • Mathematics Archives (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
  • Mathematical Resources (University of Florida)
  • WWW Virtual Library (Mathematics)
  • Yahoo! (Mathematics)
• Other mathematical sites:
  • Number Theory Web (by Keith Matthews)
  • Frequently Asked Questions in Mathematics (by Alex López-Ortiz et al.)
  • The Mathematical Atlas (by Dave Rusin)
  • History of Mathematics (University of St Andrews)
  • Archive of NMBRTHRY (Number Theory List)
  • The Prime Pages (by Chris Caldwell)
    All you never wanted to know about prime numbers.
  • The Geometry Junkyard (by David Eppstein)
  • Euclid's Elements (by David E. Joyce)
    A very impressive JAVAized version of Euclid
  • The On-line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (by Neil Sloane)
  • The Inverse Symbolic Calculator (by Simon Plouffe)
  • Wikipedia
  • The Comprehensive TeX Archive
• Search engines:
  • Google
• General:
  • The BBC
  • The UK National Lottery (by Richard K. Lloyd)
  • Private Eye
  • CricInfo
  • National Rail Enquiries
  • The Internet Movie Database
  • The Postmodernism Generator (by Andrew C. Bulhak)
  • 253 (by Geoff Ryman)

A question: what was Fermat's Number?