Dr Matthew Donald
Year started
2015
Subject
Mathematics
Fellow Type
By-Fellows,
Pursuing a long-term interest in the nature of reality, Matthew Donald read mathematics at Cambridge. He specialised in functional analysis at Part III, and then went to Cornell, where his PhD was on mathematical models in quantum field theory. A post-doctoral year at Rockefeller University, a research fellowship at Caius, and research at the Cavendish supported by the Leverhulme Trust followed.
While playing violin in a college concert as an undergraduate, he met a viola player and singer who is now the Master of this College. When it became clear that Athene’s career would flourish best in Cambridge, he became a house-husband and gentleman scholar. Since then, despite publishing the occasional mathematical paper on topics related to quantum information, he has mainly worked on the development of a “many-minds” interpretation of quantum theory. That research is presented on his website, which includes, for a general audience, a transcript of a post-prandial talk “From Quantum Theory to Philosophical Idealism” given to Fellows of Churchill College and their guests in December 2014.
He is pleased to be able to help the College by providing some supervisions in mathematics, particularly when he gets work handed in on time.
