Marcus du Sautoy
Marcus Peter Francis du Sautoy | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | August 25, 1965 |
| Awards | Berwick Prize (2001) |
| Scientific career | |
| Doctoral advisor | Daniel Segal |
| Doctoral students | Mark Berman Anton Evseev Pirita Paajanen Christopher Voll Luke Woodward |
Marcus Peter Francis du Sautoy (born August 26, 1965) is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. Formerly a Fellow of All Souls College, he is now a Fellow of Wadham College. He is currently an EPSRC Senior Media Fellow and was previously a Royal Society University Research Fellow. His academic work concerns mainly group theory and number theory.
He is most famous for his work popularizing mathematics. He has been named by The Independent on Sunday as one of the UK's leading scientists. In 2001 he won the prestigious Berwick Prize of the London Mathematical Society, which is awarded every two years to reward the best mathematical research by a mathematician under forty. He writes for The Times and The Guardian and has appeared several times on BBC Radio 4 and television. He presented the television program, Mind Games, on BBC Four. He has also written numerous academic articles and books on mathematics, the most recent being Finding Moonshine.
Biography
He grew up in Henley-on-Thames where he attended Gillotts School and then King James' College (now Henley College) before going on to Oxford University. He currently lives in London with his wife, children and cat. He plays football and the trumpet.
In March, 2006, his article Prime Numbers Get Hitched [1] was published on Seed Magazine's website. In it he explained how the number 42, mentioned in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as the answer to everything, is related to the Riemann zeta function. He has also published an article in the scientific magazine New Scientist.
In December 2006 du Sautoy delivered the 2006 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures under the collective title The Num8er My5teries. This was only the third time the subject of the lectures had been mathematics — on the first occasion in 1978, when the lecture was delivered by Erik Christopher Zeeman, du Sautoy had been a schoolboy in the audience. The venue for the 2006 Christmas Lectures was the Institution of Engineering and Technology's headquarters at Savoy Place, London.
Du Sautoy is currently presenting a four-part series called The Story of Maths on BBC4.
Publications
Bibliography
- The Music of the Primes (2003)
- Finding Moonshine (UK title, 2007); Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature (US title, 2008)
- The Num8er My5teries: A Mathematical Odyssey Through Everyday Life (2009)
Television
- The Story of Maths (BBC FOUR[2] 2008)
Articles
- Prime Numbers Get Hitched, Seed Magazine, 27 March, 2006
