Inaugural Lecture: Professor Steve Fitzgerald, School of Mathematics
- Date: Wednesday 22 April 2026, 15:45 – 18:00
- Location: Sir William Henry Bragg Building, Woodhouse, Leeds LS2 9JT
- Type: Inaugural Lecture
- Cost: Free
Join us on 22 April for the upcoming Inaugural Lecture of Steve Fitzgerald, Professor of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in the School of Mathematics.
An inaugural lecture is a significant milestone in any academic’s career, recognising their promotion to Professor. It also offers an opportunity for our new professorial colleagues to showcase their work and innovative research with a broad audience, including members of the public, family, friends, and colleagues.
This lecture is part of a Faculty-wide series that celebrates those who have joined the University to offer ever greater teaching, research, and expertise across our eight Schools.
About this lecture
In his inaugural lecture, “Linearity, isotropy, equilibrium: Simplifying assumptions that don’t always apply”, Professor Fitzgerald will discuss some simplifications that are commonly used when devising mathematical models for the world around us and, using examples from materials science, illustrate some important cases where they fail.
Building usable, predictive models of the world involves approximations, simplifications, and idealisations. This is simply because, no matter how well one might, for example understand the interactions between some atoms, it is impossible to scale up the calculations to a real system of engineering interest, which will contain more atoms than there are grams in the Earth’s mass.
Modelling often begins by identifying a feature of the system that can be exploited. This could be a small parameter, high powers of which may be ignored (e.g., low temperature, or weak forces), a geometrical assumption (e.g., that the system behaves the same in all directions), or the assumption that the system is in thermal equilibrium with its surroundings. These assumptions, and hence the models they underpin, sometimes turn out to be wrong.
In this talk, Professor Fitzgerald will explore examples of this happening in the mathematics and physics of materials, and address the potential consequences of these mistakes – which include collapsing skyscrapers and disintegrating nuclear reactors – and possible ways to fix them.
About our speaker
Steve Fitzgerald is Professor of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in the School of Mathematics. He completed his undergraduate degree in mathematics and then a PhD in elementary particle physics at the University of Cambridge between 1997 and 2005, before moving to Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, where he spent eight years developing theoretical models of materials subjected to extreme environments.
In 2013, he joined the University of Oxford, holding departmental and college lectureships in materials and applied mathematics and serving as a Fellow of Pembroke College. He moved to the University of Leeds in 2016, progressing from University Academic Fellow to Associate Professor in 2019.
He held an EPSRC Research Fellowship from 2018 to 2023. At Leeds, he has served as Director of Research and Innovation for Mathematics from 2022 to 2026, and now holds the position of Head of Applied Mathematics.
Book your place
The lecture will take place in the Sir William Henry Bragg Building at the University of Leeds, with arrival and registration from 3:45pm in the atrium, and the lecture commencing at 4:00pm in the Sir William Bragg Lecture Theatre 2.37. This will be followed by a drinks reception at 5:00pm in the atrium.
Booking is required to attend this event – you can do so at our dedicated ticket portal. Please book by Monday 20 April 2026.