Ben Martin

I am a Research Associate in the Institute of Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science (IMSAS) at the University of Kent.

Mailing address:

IMSAS
Cornwallis Building
University of Kent
Canterbury CT2 7NF
United Kingdom

Office: Cornwallis Building, Rm E208
Phone: +44 1227 827 063
Fax: +44 1227 827 932
Email: B.Martin@kent.ac.uk

I did my undergraduate degrees (BSc (Hons) in mathematics and physics) in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics and the Department of Physics at the University of Otago. I did my PhD in the Mathematics Department, King's College London, under the supervision of Dr Luke Hodgkin. Since then I have done postdoctoral research at the former School of Mathematical Sciences - now the Mathematical Sciences Institute - at the Australian National University, at the School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sydney, and at the Institute of Mathematics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I was a lecturer for a year in the Department of Mathematics at Macquarie University.

My research is on the representation theory of finitely generated groups. I study the geometry of representation varieties and character varieties; a representation variety is the space of homomorphisms from a finitely generated group to a Lie group or algebraic group, and a character variety is the space of conjugacy classes of homomorphisms. I am also interested in subgroup growth and representation growth: one counts the number a(n) of index n subgroups or n-dimensional representations of a finitely generated group, and investigates the asymptotic behaviour of the function a(n). This involves ideas from many areas of mathematics such as algebraic geometry, geometric invariant theory, topology, number theory and model theory.

During the Michaelmas Term I am teaching MA304 (Discrete Mathematics and Probability) in Week 6 (Monday 27 October to Friday 31 October) and MA318 (Computing for Mathematics) in Weeks 9-11 (Thursday 20 October to Monday 1 December). I sometimes help in computing laboratory classes in MA307 (Mathematical Investigations and Computer Algebra) and MA318.

During the Lent Term I am teaching MA300 (Geometry) in Weeks 17-20 (Monday 2 February to Friday 27 February) and MA307 in Weeks 13-14 (Monday January 5 to Friday January 16). I am offering an MA599 Miniproject on Diophantine equations and elliptic curves; classes for this are in Weeks 13-14 (Monday January 5 to Friday January 16). I am taking MA307 computing laboratory classes.

IMSAS module information page

Michaelmas Term Office Hours: Mondays 10-11, Fridays 2-3

Lent Term hello Office Hours (NEW 14/1/04): Tuesdays 2-3, Thursdays 10-11

Here is a view of the Octagon in my home city of Dunedin, New Zealand.