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Multi-Wavelength Investigations of Solar Activity c Proceedings IAU Symposium No. 223, 2004 2004 International Astronomical Union A.V. Stepanov, E.E. Benevolenskaya A.G. Kosovichev, eds. DOI: 10.1017/S1743921304007422 Our Enigmatic Sun Eric Priest1 1Department of Mathematics, University of St Andrews, ST ANDREWS KY16 9SS, UK email: eric@mcs.st-and.ac.uk 1. Introduction There are many reasons to study the Sun: it is of great scientific interest in its own right; it has profound influences on the Earth; and it is of crucial importance for astronomy, since it is the only star where we can observe fundamental cosmic processes in great detail. However, many of the basic properties of the Sun are still a mystery and so the Sun is one of the liveliest branches of astronomy to which many students are currently being attracted. Figure 1. High-resolution image of photosphere (G. Scharmer, Swedish Academy of Sciences Traditionally, there has been a very close link between mathematics and astronomy. For example, James Gregory invented the reflecting telescope but was also a co-founder with Newton and Leibniz of Calculus. He was appointed the first regius professor of mathematics at St Andrews at the age of 30 in 1668, and was give upper parliament hall as his laboratory (Figure 1), where you can see to this day the meridian line on the floor, along which he aligned his telescope. He left St Andrews in 1674 because of “a prejudice the masters of the University did take at the mathematics”, and went to Edinburgh, but tragically he died a year later - at the age of 37. He discovered many techniques