Marcus Peter Francis du Sautoy (born 26 August 1965) is a British mathematician, Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, Fellow of New College, Oxford and author of popular mathematics and popular science books. He was previously a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, Wadham College, Oxford and served as president of the Mathematical Association, an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) senior media fellow, and a Royal Society University Research Fellow. In 1996, he was awarded the title of distinction of Professor of Mathematics.

Education and early life

Du Sautoy was born in London to Bernard du Sautoy, employed in the computer industry, and Jennifer ( Deason) du Sautoy, who left the Foreign Office to raise her children. He grew up in Henley-on-Thames. His grandfather, Peter du Sautoy, was chairman of the publisher Faber and Faber, and managed the estates of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. Du Sautoy was educated at Gillotts Comprehensive School and King James's Sixth Form College (now Henley College) and Wadham College, Oxford, where he was awarded a first class honours degree in mathematics. In 1991 he completed a doctorate in mathematics on discrete groups, analytic groups and Poincaré series, supervised by Dan Segal.

Career and research

Du Sautoy's research "uses classical tools from number theory to explore the mathematics of symmetry". Du Sautoy's academic work concerns mainly group theory and number theory. Du Sautoy is known for his work popularising mathematics, and has been named by The Independent on Sunday as one of the UK's leading scientists. He has also served on the advisory board of Mangahigh.com, an online maths game website. He is a regular contributor to the BBC Radio 4's In Our Time programme and has written for The Times and The Guardian. He has written numerous academic articles and books on mathematics, the most recent being an exploration of the current state of creativity in artificial intelligence, The Creativity Code. He is co-director of PRiSM, the Centre for Practice & Research in Science & Music at the Royal Northern College of Music, which he co-founded with composer Emily Howard. In a 2006 article published in Seed magazine, du Sautoy discussed the Hilbert-Pólya conjecture, a way for advances in quantum physics to provide insight into the Riemann hypothesis.

Books

His popular mathematics and popular science books include:

Television

Among many other programmes, Du Sautoy presented the BBC Four television programme Mind Games and co-hosted the TV series School of Hard Sums with Dara Ó Briain. On the latter show, he posed mathematical questions with real-world applications. Ó Briain and a guest then tried to solve the problems, using rigorous and experimental methods, respectively. In December 2006, du Sautoy 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. Other television work includes:

Awards and honours

Du Sautoy was awarded the Berwick Prize in 2001 by the London Mathematical Society for the publication of outstanding mathematical research. In 2009 he won the Michael Faraday Prize from the Royal Society of London for "excellence in communicating science to UK audiences". Du Sautoy was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2010 New Year Honours "for services to Science". He was elected a fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2012 and in a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2016.

Personal life

Du Sautoy lives in London with his family and plays football (No 17 for Recreativo Hackney FC) and the trumpet. He met his wife Shani while a postdoctoral researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. They have three children, who are being raised Jewish. Du Sautoy is an atheist but has stated that as holder of the Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science his focus is going to be "very much on the science and less on religion", perhaps suggesting a difference of emphasis compared with his predecessor in the post, Richard Dawkins. He has described his own religion as being "Arsenal – football", as he sees religion as wanting to belong to a community. Du Sautoy is a supporter of Common Hope, an organisation that helps people in Guatemala. He is the grandson of Peter du Sautoy and his godmother was Valerie Eliot.