Marcus du Sautoy

Brainbox Marcus De Saytoy is the Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. His passion lies in teaching difficult mathematical concepts and making them palatable for the general public. He has been very influential in popularising maths--showing how it affects every aspect of our lives from simple counting to any form of trade and even the homes in which we live. In recognition of his work he won the Michael Faraday Prize from the Royal Society of London for "excellence in communicating science to UK audiences". His academic work concerns mainly group theory and number theory. He is also the President of the Mathematical Association and previously an EPSRC Senior Media Fellow and a Royal Society University Research Fellow. Marcus was born in August 1965 in London and grew up in Henley-on-Thames. His intellectual journey began at local comprehensives Gillott's School and King James's College (VI Form, now Henley College) and Wadham College, Oxford where he obtained first class honours in Mathematics. He went on to complete his DPhil in mathematics. Marcus is the author of The Music of the Primes - a genuinely bestselling maths book. He also writes for The Guardian and Telegraph, presents films for BBC's Horizon and regularly pops up as a guest on Radio 4's In Our Time. He 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. Throughout his distinguished career Marcus has received a number of accolades. He has been named by The Independent on Sunday as one of the UK's leading scientists and, in 2001, he won the Berwick Prize of the London Mathematical Society, which is awarded every two years to reward the best mathematical research by a mathematician under forty. Du Sautoy is also on the advisory board of Mangahigh.com--an online maths game website and has appeared on Channel 4 News and on BBC Radio 4's Today programme promoting the service and is a regular contributor to the same network's In Our Time. He also appears on the TV series School of Hard Sums with Dara Ó Briain. He is also a supporter of Common Hope, an organisation that helps people in Guatemala. Marcus is an unrivaled speaker on mathematics and is represented in London, England by Useful Talent.