Sometimes Oxford, that much-maligned national institution, so often associated only with Brideshead and the Bullingdon, really gets it right. When I was a young Fellow at All Souls, there was one other member of college – not Isaiah Berlin – who liked the Happy Mondays and New Order, and his name was Marcus du Sautoy. I nicknamed him Dr Maths. He was a young mathematician whose references were almost too good to believe. He dressed like a student, had changeable hair colour, was a great cook, loved music and Arsenal, and spent his evening at theatre workshops. He was also, without a shadow of a doubt, the cleverest person I had ever met. But like all truly brilliant people, he wore his prodigious intellect lightly, almost as if it were separate to his personality. So it is excellent news that Oxford has today announced his appointment to the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science, in succession to Professor Richard Dawkins.
Those who understand mathematics say that towards the end of his undergraduate career and in the first phase of his doctoral research Marcus made a stunning leap from the merely brilliant to the world-class. Nobody pretends to comprehend why such things happen in the world of deep, almost metaphysical research: but they do. I remember staying at his family home in Henley years ago during the regatta and he suddenly went very quiet. When I asked him what was up he replied: “Oh. I just thought up something new about prime numbers.” As you do.
For some, this kind of gift is a burden but Marcus has made it his mission to go out and evangelise comprehensibly. He is currently presenting a series called The Story of Maths on BBC 4, and has published two acclaimed and accessible books, The Music of the Primes and Finding Moonshine, both of which make an adventure of the most complex mathematical principles. He is a very different act to Dawkins but he has the same capacity to stretch a hand out from the academic grove to the rest of us. A true humanist, in other words.
Already a Professor of Mathematics at the University, he now moves into an explicitly public role, and one which he was born to play. Trust me: you’ll be hearing a lot more from this remarkable scholar. Well done, Dr Maths, and well done Oxford.
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