Rate My Professor Tim Burness

Professor Tim Burness is Professor of Pure Mathematics in the School of Mathematics at the University of Bristol, a position he has held since 2021, following promotions from Lecturer (2013-2014), Senior Lecturer (2014-2018), and Reader (2018-2021). He currently serves as Director of the Institute for Pure Mathematics since 2022. Earlier in his career, Burness was Lecturer in Pure Mathematics at the University of Southampton from 2008 to 2013. He held postdoctoral positions including Junior Research Fellow at St John’s College, University of Oxford (2004-2007), Lady Davis Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2006-2007), and Visiting Research Fellow at EPFL, University of Western Australia, University of Auckland, and Caltech (2007-2008). Burness obtained his BSc in Mathematics (First Class) and MSc in Mathematics (Distinction) from the University of Warwick in 2000 and 2001, respectively, and his PhD in Mathematics from Imperial College London in 2005, with a thesis on fixed point spaces in actions of finite and algebraic simple groups supervised by Professor Martin W. Liebeck.

Burness's main research area is group theory, focusing on simple groups, both finite and algebraic, with particular emphasis on subgroup structure, conjugacy classes, representation theory, permutation groups, and the application of probabilistic and computational methods. He has produced over 70 research outputs, including articles such as 'Topological generation of simple algebraic groups' (Advances in Mathematics, 2020, with S. Gerhardt and R. M. Guralnick), 'The classification of extremely primitive groups' (International Mathematics Research Notices, 2021, with A. R. Thomas), 'On the intersections of Sylow subgroups in almost simple groups' (Journal of Algebra, 2026, with H. Y. Huang), and 'On derangements in simple permutation groups' (Forum of Mathematics, Sigma, 2025, with M. Fusari). His contributions extend to editorial roles as Editor of the Journal of Algebra since 2021, Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Group Theory (2022-2025), and Managing Editor of the Journal of Group Theory (2019-2022). Burness has delivered invited lectures at numerous international conferences, including plenary speeches at Groups St Andrews (2017 and 2027) and the British Mathematical Colloquium (2024), and received honors such as the University of Bristol Research Fellowship (2021-2022), Kalman Visiting Fellowship at the University of Auckland (2015), and University of Warwick Academic Prize (2000).