Professor Geordie Williamson: ‘This is one of the most interesting points in the history of mathematics’

With just a few weeks left until he delivers his lecture on ‘AI and the Long Conversation of Mathematics’ at the 2026 Frontiers in Natural Sciences: Dean’s Annual Lecture, Professor Geordie Williamson believes that this is a pivotal moment for mathematics.

Asked why someone should attend the lecture, he responded: “This month is one of the most interesting points in the history of mathematics”.

Geordie, Director of the Sydney Mathematical Research Institute and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Sydney, will be delivering his lecture following a number of updates within the mathematics world, including Open AI solving a problem related to the Navier-Stokes equations, and Anthropic's Claude AI formalising Fermat’s last theorem in just 11 days.

Elsewhere, dozens of mathematicians from the Royal Society signed an open letter expressing express ‘extreme concern’ over the pace of development, and the head of AI company Anthropic has called for the pace of development of artificial intelligence models to slow down and to be closely monitored.

Geordie spoke about how “unexpected the speed of development has been” of AI within mathematics.

On the rate of change, he said: “I gave a big public lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in July, and I began preparing that lecture in early May, and I spent a week trying to put together some slides to convince the working mathematician that LLMs are useful. And that was four months ago.”

He added: “I think that if you look at these kind of benchmarks, it's clear that there's been a lot of development over the last years, and I think I've been a lot more aware of this development than others. But I'm still completely shocked by the last four months.”

Hear more from Professor Geordie Williamson when he delivers the Frontiers in Natural Sciences: Dean’s Annual Lecture on the topic of ‘AI and the Long Conversation of Mathematics’ on Tuesday 20 October 2026 at the Royal College of Music. Register your place now.