Nalini Joshi

@monsoon0

Mathematician, wife, mother, addicted to math

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Geordie Williamson is giving a public lecture on “AI and humanity’s longest conversation”. This is an insightful slide on the dichotomy he expresses #ICM2026

A slide is projected behind the speaker on stage, Geordie Williamson who is looking down with his hands together in front of him, and it says “Where do I stand?
/ would like this talk to reflect two things in roughly equal measure.
- A sense of wonder at this technology: the simple (mathematical!) ideas behind it, the fact that we don't understand it, and the possibilities it already offers.
- A deep concern around the potential impacts: on our discipline, on the next generation of mathematicians, and on the sense of meaning we get from intellectual activity.
international Congress”

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· 17d

For the first time in my life I have a lable that says “VIP”. Can you guess how many times I’ve been asked to move on, because a certain area is reserved for VIPs? I guess I just don’t fit the pattern 🤷🏽‍♀️

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· 19d

This is #mathemalchemy with its inventor Ingrid Daubechies #ICM2026

Ingrid is dressed in an indigo t-shirt, a printed patterned light blue skirt and is standing to the left of an installation called “mathemalchemy” which is laid out on a carpeted floor in a curvilinear shape with some stools to the left of Ingrid, a silhouette of a girl-like figure in black in the middle, a raise arc of colourful spheres and a spiral tower to the right.

A vertical banner with a diagram of mathemalchemy with QR codes of its different parts.

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· 20d

So cool to start with celebratory music #ICM2026

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· 20d

The buzz in the room is incredible #ICM2026 #Philly

Huge auditorium filling up with people for the opening ceremony of the ICM in Philadelphia

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· 23d

Anticipating the buzz of the #IMU General Assembly… by its alphabetic nature Australia always sits in the front row…

A room set up for the General Assembly of the International Mathematical Union, with rows of empty chairs and tables displaying cards of member countries–the first row shows Australia (Group IV) on the left. There is a row on a podium facing the room with names of executive committee members and a slide screen on the top right of the photo.

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· 25d

The ceiling is almost equally beautiful

Looking up at the circular glass dome of the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum, through the middle space surrounded by spiral floors, showing two arrangements of 12 segments of glass panes.

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· 25d

In case you’d like to see what I saw in New York City (while waiting for meetings of the International Mathematical Union to start), here are a couple of places I loved capturing …

The interior of the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum showing the fluid white loops of the spiral ramp leading down past art exhibits from the top to the bottom staring on the left.

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· 27d

I’m here at this deeply affecting place again

Looking from a corner of the north memorial pool at the World Trade Centre site in New York City. The pool at my level is reflecting other buildings and the sky, while the water moves inexorably towards the depths in the middle.

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· Jul 7

A shiver runs down my back whenever I read a paper that references C.L.Dodgson, Condensation of determinants, Proc. Royal Soc. London 15 (1866) 150-155. Do you know the work of Dodgson? Let me give you a hint

From Wikipedia: original illustration (1865) by John Tenniel (28 February 1820 - 25 February 1914), of the novel by Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, showing Alice holding a flamengo on her right knee propped up on what looks like a sea urchin, with a badger near her left foot, while staring into its eyes.

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· May 21

You may find the comments by Melanie Matchett Wood on the discovery of a counter example to Erdős’ Unit Distance Conjecture as interesting as I did 👇🏼(see previous post for a link)

A screenshot of p.17 of the paper available at https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/74c24085-19b0-4534-9c90-465b8e29ad73/unit-distance-remarks.pdf

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· Apr 19

Take a look at the article’s table 👇🏼

A table with 4 columns written in white letters on a black background labelled Subject, Year 11 2024, Year 12 2025, and Change. The highest change occurs under “Mathematics Advanced” with a change of -8,596.

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· Dec 27

I was searching for the arXiv reference for my recent preprint with 2 collaborators but the first hit was an AI synopsis of us as researchers 😂

An AI overview at the top of a webpage saying “Nalini Joshi, Marta Mazzocco, and Pieter Roffelsen are mathematicians known for their collaborative research on Painlevé equations and integrable systems, particularly the geometry of their solution spaces.
Their published work focuses on topics such
as:
• Segre surfaces and geometry of the Painlevé equations: They consider a family of affine Segre surfaces associated with the q-difference sixth Painlevé equation (qPVI).”

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· Dec 12

The mathematical art exhibit at this week’s AustMS also featured stunning works by @mathskath.bsky.social which she has modestly omitted in her posts about it. Behold ⤵️

A hitomezashi embroidery on cream in a beige frame, with one line of red running through it. Caption: “Katherine Seaton
Corner percolation
(2025)
Corner percolation is a mathematical constrained random walk model proposed by Bálint Tóth and investigated by Gábor Pete in 2008. More recently, it has been noted that the configurations of paths and closed loops of corner percolation are found in the centuries-old domestic stitching form hitomezashi. Whether right-angled corners are placed on the vertices of a square lattice in the mind of a twenty-first century mathematician, or lines of horizontal and vertical running stitches interact tangibly when sewn with a needle as in Edo-period Japan, the potential patterns are the same. Traditionally, lines of stitching in hitomezashi are deliberately aligned or offset from their neighbours to create designs featuring small motifs repeated periodically.
However, in this piece of mathematical fibre art the parity of the digits of i has been used to place the lines of stitching randomly. The result is a design comprised of closed loops of various sizes as well as paths of stitches that begin and end on an edge of the worked area. One such path has been highlighted for the eye in scarletwork.”

A black and white hitomezashi embroidery by Kath Seaton with a black frame. Its caption reads: “Katherine Seaton
Crosses and crowns
(2022)
Placed according to a recurrence relation for binary words proposed in a paper by Carol Hayes and Katherine Seaton, the lines of stitching in this hitomezashi piece interact to form polyominoes of various sizes, all of which are Fibonacci snowflakes (of orders 0, 1, 2, 3 and 5). The reverse of the stitching, which is not accessible due to framing, displays a translated copy of the same pattern.”

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· Dec 10

The 2025 AustMS great debate is on “AI will definitely destroy mathematics” 😁

A photo of the stage at the front of a lecture theatre with two teams of 3 on either side of a lectern decorated with images of a robotic hand on a keyboard and a young woman writing maths on a chalkboard.

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· Dec 1

Life as we know it xkcd.com/3175/

A flow chart of steps headed “DOING A TASK USING A COMPANY OR ORGANIZATION'S WEBSITE“ that starts with “Go to website try to log in” and ends with “Throw phone and laptop into the sea”.

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· Nov 30

This is Morris Birkbeck Pell (on left), the first ever Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy @sydney.edu.au

An old black & white photograph of a young man (on the left) with his head inclined on a folded arm resting behind the shoulder of a young woman (on the right). He is looking directly at the camera, while she is looking demurely to the left of the photo with her hands touching each other and resting on her lap. Both are dressed in a fashion common in the Victorian era in England.

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· Nov 18

From today’s Sydney Morning Herald

A screenshot of an article headline under “Science” stating “The Sydney mathematician finding a better way to keep your data safe” and text “Professor Nalini Joshi is developing the mathematics to make your secrets stronger” next to a snapshot of me looking up to the right with a smile.

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· Nov 6

Do you know where I am? #mathematicallife

Four statues of people in robes, crowns and haloes carved into an arched doorframe.

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· Sep 24

From #Reddit 😁 #mathsky #mathematics

An icon of the poster RepulsiveMousse3992 within the subreddit r/math followed by the text “When do you guys think the Millenium Prize will adjust for inflation?
1 million isn't that much money anymore. It is strange if they don't adjust it and allow their prize to become irrelevant just because of inflation.”

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· Sep 19

I asked ChatGPT to create a picture of a young me sliding down an elliptic curve 🤔

A cartoon of a young girl sliding down a curve from right to left. She is wearing an orange t-shirt, green shorts, orange & white sneakers, has her hands flung up with a delighted grin, and has dark fuzzy hair tied up in a ponytail on top with an orange band.

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· Sep 17

🤔… maybe I should feed it one of my #mathematics problems 😁

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· Sep 9

My talk today for #Baxter2025 at 11:30 AEST (UTC+10) 👇🏼

A title slide with the title “How I learnt to stop worrying and love” in grey and “Elliptic Curves” in larger black font above my name and the phrase “Dedicated to Rodney J. Baxter in italics, followed by the Univeristu fo Sydney crest. The background is light olive green.

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· Sep 6

Like everything I love, complex analytic function theory has become the beautiful lens through which I see everything.

A plot of the contour lines of modulus of the natural log of the Gamma function (from https://mathworld.wolfram.com/LogGammaFunction.html). It uses a range of colours including red, magenta, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red.

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· Sep 6

I have loved complex analysis ever since I read Lars Ahlfors’ book 📕.

The dark blue front cover of a hardback edition of “Complex analysis an introduction to the theory of analytic functions of one complex variable”
by Lars Valerian Ahlfors

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· Sep 3

The President of @science.org.au Chennupati Jagadish is on fire today, with the best speech I’ve ever heard him give calling for change in the way Australia to change our commitment and investment in science

A room with a sloping floor and wooden benches with seated people looking towards the podium with the President at the lectern in front of a screen stating “Australian Science, Australia’s future”.

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· Aug 30

Will you be @sydney.edu.au today for #OpenDay? I’ll be at the Mathematics desk in the Great Hall 12:00-14:00 AEST

An aerial view of the main quadrangle of the University of Sydney showing slate roofs, sandstone walls surrounded by green lawns and roads.

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· Aug 25

An interesting conversation going on at #SAGE2025 tonight

Two people holding microphones sitting on red chairs against a screen stating “Fireside chat, Anti-wokeism: Should we be afraid?” With the names of the speakers underneath: Prof Mustafa Ozbilgin in conversation with Prof Dimitria Groutsis”

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· Aug 6

I have been away for a while …

A photo of the road through the front windscreen of a car looking out over an unsealed, rippled road and borders of sage-grey bushes. The sky above is blue with lines of feathered clouds …

Nalini Joshi@monsoon0· Jul 28

Do you know where I am?