A Chinese checkers board set up for a three player game.
Image: Chinese-checkers Wikimedia Commons user Splattne, CC BY-SA 3.0
Calum is a lecturer in physics at Edge Hill University where he studies topological solitons and enjoys talking about maths and physics to anyone who will listen. He can often be found on the side of a mountain or out on a bike, talking to himself about solitons.
More from Chalkdust

Oπnions: In defence of toy models
Calum gets on his soap box about toy models
Cryptic wordsearch, Issue 19
Can you solve it?
On the cover: skyrmions
Sven Bjarke Gudnason and Calum Ross introduce you to the wonderful world of skyrmions
Problem solving 101
Never be stumped by a maths problem again, with this crash course from the ever-competent Stephen Muirhead
Switching sides in a matrix equation
Looking for a neat description of this useful matrix part-inverse
Review of Birth of a Theorem
Cédric Villani’s Birth of a Theorem tells the story of a mathematical theorem
