Will Turner is a PhD student in mathematics at TUBAF and specialises in graphs. In the spring of 2026, he conducted research at the University of São Paulo and gained teaching experience there. In this interview, Will Turner explains how he uses the universal ‘language’ of mathematics to navigate across language barriers and how graphs shape our Google searches.
You’re doing a PhD in mathematics and have already spent several periods abroad as part of your studies. Does communicating through numbers and equations make international exchange easier?
When we talk about our research in mathematics, we use English, which just happens to be my mother tongue. I’m still learning German at the moment, and I’ve noticed something quite interesting: I find it much easier to talk about maths in German, whilst everyday conversations are often still much harder for me. I think this is because the structure of mathematical reasoning and mathematical thinking is, to a large extent, universal and independent of language. That makes maths the best way for me to improve my German!
Interesting! During your stay in São Paulo, you also taught in classroom, didn’t you?
Yes, I ran a seminar on graph theory for Master’s students and PhD candidates – but not in Portuguese, really, rather in English. And it wasn’t the first time I’d given talks to fellow students or colleagues either. I’ve also led tutorials for students in Birmingham and Freiberg, and have presented my research in Ottawa and London, for example.
Let's think about a different audience: How do you explain graph theory to people who have never heard of it before?
The theory deals with abstract networks. And we encounter networks everywhere: in links between websites, relationships between followers on social media, on printed circuit boards, in the spread of an infection during an epidemic, or in a chemical reaction. There are a multitude of processes that can be analysed using such networks. Some of these ‘results’ do not depend at all on what the network specifically represents, but rather on the patterns and structure found within the network as an abstract object. That is precisely my field of research.
