Math-Frolic profile #11 is upon us... Marcus du Sautoy is one of the best known, most prolific math popularizers out there. I’m especially drawn to him because, he’s even more follicularly-challenged than I am, despite being young enough to be my baby brother. He’s so well-known in fact that there’s really no reason to profile him… but that hasn't stopped me before, so, in brief, here goes:
Marcus was born in 1965 the same year (as he may or may not wish divulged) as Piers Morgan, and also the same year I bought perhaps my favorite Beatles album, “Rubber Soul” (…which thank God didn’t have “Hey Jude” on it — the most over-rated pop song in galactic history, and if you think otherwise then we better never meet in a dark alley… but, I digress).
I don’t know what kind of name “Du Sautoy” is, by the way, but it sure is hard to rhyme anything with it. Even Ancestry.com doesn't seem to know a lot about it; perhaps it is of Martian origin.
Speaking of which, I’m pretty convinced that Marcus’s dad was Patrick Stewart of Star Trek fame (…don’t ask me how I figure these things out; but ya know I didn’t go to kindergarten for nuthin’):
I couldn’t find much on Du Sautoy’s childhood or teenage years or past lives nor his FICO score, but he did attend Wadham College, Oxford (probably because the daily commute to California's Pomona College from London would’ve been ghastly), where he received a PhD. in mathematics in 1991. He continues to teach at Oxford… when he’s not involved with one of his 1501 other activities/projects.
He famously took over Richard Dawkins’ position as the Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science:
Hmmmm... "Public Understanding of Science"... in America at least, that would be a bit of an oxymoron. Nonetheless, me thinkest Marcus is a very topnotch science communicator... and we urgently need more of those types in the U.S. to assist Ben Orlin in his ongoing, uphill endeavor. So Marcus, please Brexit Britain for the U.S., AND, as a bonus you'll get to learn how real football is played! If you'd bring John Cleese along with you I'd be especially grateful.
Like Dawkins, Marcus labels himself an atheist, though in the past he has quipped that his religion is Arsenal, which I worry may categorize him, by some, as an arsonist.
Du Sautoy notes that he is an admirer of the creative, romantic French mathematician Evariste Galois (whose name is also difficult to rhyme), though I suspect not so much an admirer of the lad's paltry dueling prowess.
Despite Sophie Carr recently being crowned The Internet’s Most Entertaining Mathematician for 2019, it’s possible that off the Web Du Sautoy holds that title with his many books, lectures, appearances, programs. In any event if Marcus ever challenges Sophie to a duel I’m not sure, without doing some Bayesian analysis, who I’d put my money on.
Marcus has written several popular books, the latest one being on AI:
“The Creativity Code: How AI Is Learning to Write, Paint and Think”
Others include:
“Finding Moonshine”
“Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature”
“The Num8er My5teries: A Mathematical Odyssey Through Everyday Life”
“What We Cannot Know”
“The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science”
and perhaps his most popular volume, “The Music of the Primes,” one of a mini-flurry of fascinating general audience accounts of the Riemann Hypothesis to come out in recent times. I think that IF they turned this volume into a theatre-release movie entitled, “The Music of the Primes of Miss Jean Brodie” (starring Matt Parker and Hannah Fry) it would be a guaranteed smash success.... why does no one ever follow up on my brilliant ideas?
Marcus plays the trumpet (Aha! "Bugle Boy du Sautoy") and likes what they euphemistically call 'football' in Europe (ya know, kicking a ball around for 11 hours hoping perchance it may fly into a net at some random point).
In fact, one webpage reports that Marcus has a cat named ‘Freddie Ljungberg’ — being American I had to look that reference up since I didn’t have a clue; and then I was disappointed, especially upon learning that Freddie had been a model for Calvin Klein underwear… ewww. Personally, I prefer engineer Saramoira Shields’ names for her cats, “Parsec” and “Ligo.” Or how about “Archimedes,” yeah that’s a fine mathematician's name for a feline… but, well, to each their own.
In fact, one webpage reports that Marcus has a cat named ‘Freddie Ljungberg’ — being American I had to look that reference up since I didn’t have a clue; and then I was disappointed, especially upon learning that Freddie had been a model for Calvin Klein underwear… ewww. Personally, I prefer engineer Saramoira Shields’ names for her cats, “Parsec” and “Ligo.” Or how about “Archimedes,” yeah that’s a fine mathematician's name for a feline… but, well, to each their own.
Du Sautoy says in one interview that he “fell in love with mathematics about the same time as I started learning the trumpet. Since then, I've always been convinced that mathematics and music share much in common.” I totally agree with that (…so long as one doesn’t count “Hey Jude” as music).
Marcus has won many prizes, awards, honors over the years… too many to mention, so we’ll just say he seems to be a splendidly fine chap all-in-all and leave it at that. He writes for many different venues, has appeared on a slew of BBC series and specials about math and science, and collaborated on various artistic projects, as well. If you want to see him in action, and have a few months of free time, you’re welcome to binge-watch some of these videos:
In short, I don’t know how he does it all; at his age I was still trying to figure out how the metric system worked, which, like the rest of America, I gave up on. But he just keeps going and going, like the Energizer Bunny; writing, speaking, doing, mathematizing, with occasional loo breaks (see, I can speak British when I choose to).
Marcus is on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/MarcusduSautoy
And he even has a Facebook page, but by now I assume Mark Zuckerberg and all Facebook pages are under the stringent control of Vladimir Putin, so I'll refuse to link to it. (Take THAT Vlad!, you rascally Rooski) You may do so at your own peril though.
If you wish to know still more about Marcus du Sautoy simply Google or DuckGoGo his name and plenty additional will come up… just try not to get confused and link by accident, to Marquis de Sade; that could prove embarrassing (…don’t ask me how I know that).
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(p.s.… the amazing thing is that I actually finally got completely through one of these math profiles without making even a single ill reference to our very own sh*t-for-brains President.)
Prior math profiles have been of:
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