Victoria Ruth Neale (March 1984 – 3 May 2023) was a British mathematician and writer. She was Whitehead Lecturer at

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

's Mathematical Institute and Supernumerary Fellow at

Balliol College Balliol College () is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. Founded in 1263 by nobleman John I de Balliol, it has a claim to be the oldest college in Oxford and the English-speaking world. With a governing body of a master and ar ...

. Her research specialty was

number theory Number theory is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic functions. Number theorists study prime numbers as well as the properties of mathematical objects constructed from integers (for example ...

. The author of the 2017 book '' Closing the Gap: The Quest to Understand Prime Numbers'', she was interviewed on several

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

radio programs as a mathematics expert. In addition, she wrote for ''The Conversation'' and ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

''. Her other educational and outreach activities included lecturing at the PROMYS Europe high-school program and helping to organize the

European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad The European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad (EGMO) is a mathematical olympiad for girls which started in 2012, and is held in April each year. It was inspired by the China Girls Mathematical Olympiad (CGMO). Although the competition is held in Euro ...

. Neale was born in 1984. She obtained her PhD in 2011 from the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

. Her thesis work, supervised by

Ben Joseph Green Ben Joseph Green FRS (born 27 February 1977) is a British mathematician, specialising in combinatorics and number theory. He is the Waynflete Professor of Pure Mathematics at the University of Oxford. Early life and education Ben Green wa ...

, concerned

Waring's problem In number theory, Waring's problem asks whether each natural number ''k'' has an associated positive integer ''s'' such that every natural number is the sum of at most ''s'' natural numbers raised to the power ''k''. For example, every natural num ...

. She then taught at Cambridge while being Director of Studies in mathematics at

Murray Edwards College Murray Edwards College is a women-only constituent college of the University of Cambridge. It was founded in 1954 as New Hall and renamed in 2008. The name honours a gift of £30 million by alumna Ros Edwards and her husband Steve, and the firs ...

, before moving to Oxford in the summer of 2014. Neale died on 3 May 2023, at the age of 39. She had been diagnosed with a rare type of cancer in 2021.Dr Vicky Neale (1984-2023)

London Mathematical Society The London Mathematical Society (LMS) is one of the United Kingdom's Learned society, learned societies for mathematics (the others being the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), the Edinburgh ...

References

1984 births 2023 deaths 21st-century British mathematicians Additive combinatorialists Fellows of Balliol College, Oxford Deaths from cancer in the United Kingdom {{UK-mathematician-stub