The Department of Mathematics is hosting a series of colloquia, open for all to attend. On 28 April 2026, Christina Goldschmidt from the University of Oxford will give a talk on 'Scaling Limits of Random Trees.'

Registration:

This talk will take place in person at King's College London in Bush House Lecture Theatre 2, BH(S) 4.04. A reception will follow afterwards in the same room. The talk will also be streamed online via Microsoft Teams. Please click 'Register for this event' to sign up for either an In-Person Ticket or an Online Ticket on Eventbrite. If you wish to attend the in-person event, you must select the correct ticket type.

Abstract

Scaling Limits of Random Trees

Consider the set of labelled trees on n vertices. Cayley’s formula tells us that there are n^{n-2} elements in this set; pick one uniformly at random. What can we say about this random tree in the limit as n goes to infinity? There are several different ways in which this (very vague!) question may be approached. One is via a scaling limit, that is, finding a good way to rescale the object with n (in this case, by giving each of its edges length n^{-1/2}) and then sending n to infinity, so that we obtain a continuum limit which is a random tree-like object. The limit in this case was discovered by David Aldous in 1990, and is known as the Brownian continuum random tree. My aim in this talk is to give an introduction to this beautiful area of probability theory.

About the Speaker: 

Christina Goldschmidt is a Professor of Probability at the University of Oxford and a Tutorial Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on probability theory, specifically the study of random trees, graphs, and their scaling limits. She was named a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 2019 and selected as an IMS Medallion Lecturer for 2016. Known for both her research and her teaching, she has received multiple University Teaching Excellence Awards.

Learn more about Christina Goldschmidt on her webpage and also on Wikipedia.

Future colloquia

Please check our event series for details of upcoming speakers.