Thomas Ward

Thomas Ward (born 3 October 1963) is a British mathematician who works in ergodic theory and dynamical systems and its relations to number theory.

Ward was the fourth child of the physicist Alan Howard Ward and Elizabeth Honor Ward, a physics teacher.

He attended Woodlands Primary School in Lusaka, Zambia, Waterford Kamhlaba United World College in Swaziland, and (briefly) the Thomas Hardye School in Dorchester, England.

He studied mathematics at the University of Warwick from 1982, gaining an MSc with dissertation entitled "Automorphisms of solenoids and p-adic entropy" in 1986 and a PhD with dissertation entitled "Topological entropy and periodic points for Zd actions on compact abelian groups with the Descending Chain Condition" in 1989, both under the supervision of Klaus Schmidt.

Ward worked at the University of Maryland in College Park, the Ohio State University, and the University of East Anglia.

He served in editorial roles for the London Mathematical Society from 2002 to 2012 and was a managing editor of Ergodic Theory and Dynamical Systems from 2012 to 2014.

In 2012 he moved to Durham University as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education, in 2016 to the University of Leeds as Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Student Education, and to Newcastle University as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education from 2021 to 2023.

In 2012 Ward, along with Graham Everest (posthumously) was awarded the Paul R. Halmos - Lester R. Ford Award for A Repulsion Motif in Diophantine Equations printed in the American Mathematical Monthly.

He served on the HEFCE advisory committees for Widening Participation and Student Opportunity (2013–15) and Teaching Excellence and Student Opportunity (2015–17).