In a plenary session this Sunday at the 2008 Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF) Marcus du Sautoy, a professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, delighted us with his career story… and the mathematics of symmetry.
Marcus du Sautoy’s first career ambition was rather remote from the world of mathematics. As a kid, du Sautoy was yearning to be a spy. With his mum owning a gun for working at the U.K. Foreign Office, "I immediately assumed that my mum was a spy and I wanted to get a job like my mum had," du Sautoy said. So he started learning French and Russian, two languages he had decided were essential for a spying career. But du Sautoy soon became frustrated with languages. It was "a total disaster," he said.
Du Sautoy didn’t contemplate a career in mathematics until later when his high-school teacher asked him to come and see him at the end of the class. "'I think you should find out what mathematics really is about. It’s something much more exciting than what we do in the classroom,'" du Sautoy says his teacher told him. The teacher recommended du Sautoy to read A Mathematician’s Apology, (PDF) by G.H. Hardy, on the aesthetics of mathematics. Du Sautoy, who at that time was contemplating a career in the arts, realized that mathematics is "beautiful in its own right," he said. Another book--Frank Land’s The Language of Mathematics--and du Sautoy was hooked. "The language of mathematics seemed to be the best language to comprehend the world around us. Everything made perfect sense. That appealed to me."
During the rest of his talk du Sautoy took us through the beauty and history of symmetry--"a universal language that binds the arts and the sciences"--as a mathematical concept. To get his message across du Sautoy used simple analogies with the biological and the chemical worlds, pieces of Bach’s music, and pictures of symmetric elements found in renowned buildings all over the world.
It worked. Du Sautoy didn’t lose me even once in the meanders of mathematical symmetry. This obvious talent for communication has made of du Sautoy a regular writer for British newspapers, an author of popular mathematics books, and a scriptwriter and presenter for the national TV and radio.
The 9 young scientists who spent some time a solas with du Sautoy during the 'Tapas with the Prof' session that followed the plenary lecture got to know a little more about that particular aspect of du Sautoy’s career.
Du Sautoy stepped into science communication after chatting informally about mathematics with an editor of The Times newspaper at a party in Oxford. The editor invited him to write an article but "I didn’t do anything. I was quite young then. You don’t want to expose yourself too early because you get criticized" by your peers, du Sautoy said. But when he met the editor again three years later at the same party, and saw that the editor remembered the invitation, du Sautoy was so impressed he gave it a go.
Since then he’s never stopped communicating to the public, even though "for many years I have been really looked down upon from my colleagues for doing that," said du Sautoy, who in 2001 won the Berwick Prize of the London Mathematical Society for the best mathematical research done by a mathematician under 40. Typically, communicating to the public "is not considered a core part of your work" like research and teaching. It was perceived as "not the proper thing to do."
Today du Sautoy still gets mixed support from his peers, but he obtained a Senior Media Fellowship from the U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for somebody else to do his teaching. This is "one of the reasons I can do what I do," du Sautoy said. "I think [communicating to the public] is important."
Comments
Post a comment