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

The human mug
Potatoes, mugs and doughnuts with Ashleigh Ratcliffe.
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
The power of curly brackets
Mats Vermeeren sketches a simple proof of Noether's first theorem
Carnival of mathematics 152
We round up some of the last month's top mathematical posts from around the internet
