Diary – 6 January 2007

I was ready for the depression but it still doesn’t stop it hitting. Doing the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures was such an exhilarating, exhausting six-month roller-coaster ride. The climax was a two-week adrenaline-charged loop-the-loop staging what felt like five wild maths pantos. Then the last lecture is given, filmed and delivered and bang, the ride comes to an end and I’m spat out the other side on my own again. The camaraderie of staging a show is a very temporary thing. I remember as a student the feeling of isolation after the last night of putting on a play. You promise to see each other soon. Take phone numbers. Swear to have them round for dinner. But then everyone goes their different ways. For me the contrast is probably starker than for the rest of crew. Doing maths is by its very nature a lonely pursuit. You have to hide away, trying to achieve that level of Buddhist meditation that lets you escape into the mathematical world. Many mathematicians hanker after that escapism, but the isolation can be hard. My fantasy when the mathematical going gets tough has always been to chuck it all in and join the Lecoq Mime Theatre in Paris. The Christmas Lectures were a way of fulfilling both my fantasies: doing maths and theatre.

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What is it about mathematics that brings out the nutters? The first emails I get after the broadcast of the lectures are filled with mad theories about cabbalistic primes or how the Koran already holds the answer to the mathematical shape of the universe. I even have a crazy person on the phone harassing me with some new logic called Je Suis which he thinks will help my research. ‘If you take the “I” out of this logic you’ll see the message the universe is trying to communicate to us.’