Yesterday, we sent our team of seven students to compete against Cambridge in the Applied Maths Meeting (aka the Woolly Owl). This is a bienniel competition between Oxford and Cambridge graduate students to claim the prize of the Woolly Owl, a plush toy knitted by a tea-lady in the Maths Institute many years ago. The winner of the competition would be allowed to retain the owl for the next two years until the next clash.

The history of the meeting stretches back to 1983. More on the meeting later, but here is a photo of Emeritus Profs. John Ockendon from Oxford and Herbert Huppert from Cambridge who agreed that they were the joint founders of the meeting.