Victoria Ruth Neale (March 1984 – 3 May 2023)[2] was a British mathematician and writer. She was Whitehead Lecturer at Oxford's Mathematical Institute and Supernumerary Fellow at Balliol College.[3][4] Her research specialty was number theory. The author of the 2017 book Closing the Gap: The Quest to Understand Prime Numbers,[5][6] she was interviewed on several BBC radio programs as a mathematics expert.[7][8] In addition, she wrote for The Conversation and The Guardian.[9][10] Her other educational and outreach activities included lecturing at the PROMYS Europe high-school program[11] and helping to organize the European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad.[12]
Vicky Neale | |
---|---|
Born | March 1984[2] |
Died | (aged 39) |
Citizenship | United Kingdom |
Alma mater |
|
Scientific career | |
Fields | |
Institutions | |
Thesis | Bracket quadratics as asymptotic bases for the natural numbers (2011) |
Doctoral advisor | Ben Green |
Website | people |
Neale was born in 1984.[13] She obtained her PhD in 2011 from the University of Cambridge. Her thesis work, supervised by Ben Joseph Green, concerned Waring's problem.[3][1] She then taught at Cambridge while being Director of Studies in mathematics at Murray Edwards College,[12][14] before moving to Oxford in the summer of 2014.[15]
Neale died on 3 May 2023, at the age of 39.[16] She had been diagnosed with a rare type of cancer in 2021.[17]