Unravelling the Beauty of Mathematics with Marcus du Sautoy

Professor Marcus du Sautoy, Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, has been long credited for his efforts to popularise science – particularly mathematics and related subjects.

Here, he discusses his motivation for popularising mathematics and the balance between his academic research and public engagement, and explores the challenges and goals of democratising science.

Emphasising the importance of informed decision-making on complex issues like artificial intelligence, energy, and even music, du Sautoy has a wide-ranging array of expertise which he intends to share with the public.

Read more in Research Features

Transcript

00:00:06 Todd Beanlands

Hello, I'm Todd. Welcome to research pod mathematics. Sometimes holds a reputation for being difficult or disconnected from everyday life for many, but for Professor Marcus de Soto Y, it's a source of creativity, structure and insight to be shared widely.

00:00:23 Todd Beanlands

As the Simonian professor for the public understanding of science at the University of Oxford, de Soto has built a career on making complex ideas excess.

00:00:33 Todd Beanlands

He's helped thousands of people discover the beauty and relevance of mathematics, whether in the patterns of nature, the logic of music.

00:00:40 Todd Beanlands

Or the rise of artificial intelligence in this interview with our sister publication, research features, we learn about the challenges of engaging the public with science, the evolving connections between maths and creativity, and why informed decision making is more important than ever in our increasingly complex world.

00:01:04 Speaker 2

Could we start by just chatting about your role as the the face of public science at Oxford?

00:01:08

Like.

00:01:10 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Yeah. So I I have this job called the professor for the public understanding of science, which is an incredibly grand sounding title and makes everyone think I must say the whole of science. And here I am to explain it to you all. But I kind of call this role.

00:01:25 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Like being an ambassador, every country has its ambassadors that it sends to other countries to help communication between two foreign lands. And for me, I feel science for many people is a bit like a.

00:01:38 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Foreign territory and say we need ambassadors to try and help communication between those who have don't understand the world of science so much, but it obviously has a massive impact on them and I think that's really my role to try and facilitate involvement by the public, who perhaps aren't as scientifically trained as.

00:01:59 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Community within the university to be involved in the debate because there's so much impact that science is having on society that they.

00:02:06 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

They in order to be empowered to decide what you want to do with the science, you have to.

00:02:12 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Understand the science. It's my feeling.

00:02:14 Speaker 2

Is there is there any sort of sense of democratizing science and away when you're doing that sort of making it more accessible and to to be?

00:02:21

Like.

00:02:21 Speaker 2

Able to understand.

00:02:23 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

A tricky issue because there's no way in an afternoon at Cheltenham Science Festival that I can make somebody into a scientist. So that's what's interesting about the role that, that there is.

00:02:35 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

A A kind of disparity there, so a full democratisation.

00:02:39 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Of it is.

00:02:41 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Probably an impossible goal, but what you want to do is to try and give people as as much information to be able to make informed decisions because you know a lot of this will have political implications and they gotta decide or what do. I don't want to do about stem cells.

00:02:56 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Do I? Should I be frightened about artificial intelligence? What are we going to do with our choices about how we generate our energy? So I think.

00:03:05 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

It it's kind of interesting. You see, my job is called the professor for the public understanding of science. But that's quite an old school idea because it is. It's very sort of top down delivery of the ideas to the public. And I think probably, you know, if you see similar roles like this being created today, my job was created in.

00:03:25 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

The mid 90s.

00:03:27 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

When Richard Dawkins was the first holder of the chair, but now it'll be called something like Professor of Science and Society, and there will be that level of equality sort in the title of the job. But I think there there is a certain extent where we do have very technical knowledge that we.

00:03:47 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Have accumulated over many.

00:03:48 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Is of study and research, and the challenge is you know well, how do you distill those incredibly complex ideas in an afternoon or in a television program or in a book somebody spends, you know, many hours with, but still you're not expecting by the end of the book, for somebody to be of a level that they can.

00:04:09 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Solve mathematical theorems, but they want to have an insight enough to be able to to appreciate what that means to be a mathematician, for example.

00:04:16

So.

00:04:17 Speaker 2

Yeah, and igniting curiosity in people, I suppose if you're a place like this.

00:04:22 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Well, that's certainly true. You see it in a way I'm paying back all of those scientists in the past that inspired me to to do what I do, and I think that's that's part of the job. And you can see today we hear during a school day and just the festival is absolutely rammed.

00:04:39 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

With students that are totally being inspired and may become the next generation of scientists who will solve all the problems that we can't solve so.

00:04:47 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Part of it is inspiring the next generation, but for me, I don't think that's the only part and I think many people think outreach on science is about just the young. No, I actually think it's also about those in power who perhaps don't have the the kind of insight about what science is that also we need to.

00:05:06 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Influence and inspire and bring on board. So for me my audience is very mixed. It isn't just the the young to inspire them, it's.

00:05:15 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

So the parents and the teachers, the people in industry, the people in government who are really shaping our society that need to to be scientifically literate enough to incorporate that into their vision.

00:05:28 Speaker 2

Could we chat about your music as well?

00:05:30 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Music is one of my great passions, and I think there was a point when I was younger where I really.

00:05:36 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

It was a toss up whether I was going to go the musical direction or the mathematical 1, and I was a trumpeter. I am a trumpeter.

00:05:44 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

And I realised.

00:05:46 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Actually, being a musician is hard work, and being a man petition that I'm rather lazy at heart, and if you can do it, there's you know you can actually solve a problem quite fast so that the many hours of practice I realized I'd have to do as a trumpeter. But you know, I have maintained a, you know, strong interest in music and and that has actually formed.

00:06:06 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Part of my kind of.

00:06:08 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Professional career as well. So I think there are lots of connections between mathematics and music.

00:06:14 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

I sometimes like to call mathematics the science of patterns and music. The art of patterns, and I think that idea of pattern is a really key thing which connects the 2 and so I have done a lot of work using music as a platform to involve people in mathematical ideas.

00:06:34 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Because a lot of music has mathematical structures hidden inside them, sometimes composes.

00:06:41 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Intuitively, discover them themselves, or sometimes they actively know about them and embed them into the music. So this has led actually to me setting up a center with a composer in Manchester. So this is at the Royal Northern College of Music, RCM and we set up a center called PRISM which stands for practice and research and science and music.

00:07:01 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

And through there, we're looking really at this strong collaboration between musical composition and scientific ideas.

00:07:09 Speaker 2

Yeah. And even outside of music as well, you've collaborated with our comedians and sort of other musicians and things. Has that impacted your attitude to all the science at all? Or it should be?

00:07:20 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Communicated well, you're very helpfully setting up a promotion for my next book, which is called blueprints. I've spent a lot of time working with creative artists over the.

00:07:30 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Is and the exciting thing is not just music but and many other disciplines. Visual arts, architecture, literature, even comedy has kind of structure to it and and again another definition I give of mathematics is that it's a study of structure.

00:07:47 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

And because structure is so important to any creative endeavor, somehow you're always going to find something of of mathematical nature hidden inside something which has structure. So I think, you know, I've really enjoyed those collaborations, partly by bringing my language to a creative artist who then.

00:08:07 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Was able to articulate perhaps what they were doing in an intuitive way much more clearly, or bringing new structures which then take them on new journeys also gives me a vehicle to explain mathematics to perhaps an artistic audience, which is really useful.

00:08:24 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

But the other?

00:08:24 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Ideas that those artists will often ask me questions about structures that I haven't considered before. So last year I did a project about a cello piece by a Greek composer called Janis Anarkis, and we did an incredible, beautiful animation to explain this kind of structure of symmetry that's hiding behind there.

00:08:45 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

But as I began to understand how Xenakis put this piece together, he was using a structure within symmetry, which is my area of research that.

00:08:55 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

I never actually thought about before, so that's the exciting thing. When these interactions can OfferUp a new question for me as a mathematician, and I think there are a lot of wonderful Sci art collaborations, but I think the genuinely interesting ones are those where it's it's really a two way dialogue and not just the one way plundering of the scientist. Cabinet of Wonders for.

00:09:17 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Artistic creation.

00:09:19 Speaker 2

Chatting about the two way dialogue, do you find that there's like a knowledge and transfer between what you saw present to people here and what you?

00:09:27 Speaker 2

Take.

00:09:27 Speaker 2

Back and then in in your teaching arena.

00:09:30 Speaker 2

Of how you present those ideas when you.

00:09:32 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Go back to Oxford. Yeah, I think it's only by engaging an audience that you understand the things that work. The idea is the metaphors, the stories that resonate, and those that somehow don't connect. And so that kind of dialogue is, is really important. I mean, it's.

00:09:50 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

It's true for every.

00:09:51 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

The body who's communicating with an audience in a way so I know I do a lot of work with a theater company in London complicity and they always say their first performances are just rehearsals with an audience so they're still part of the rehearsal process. Although people are now paying to come and see the show, it's not fixed.

00:10:11 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

By the first night, it's still changing and mutating, so I think every time you you.

00:10:15 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Each trying to tell your stories. You learn so much from the the interaction, and you take that back and to.

00:10:21 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Own or to inform the next steps.

00:10:24 Speaker 2

Yeah. And when you're doing that, there's some things come up that you haven't even thought of. Does that sort of.

00:10:29 Speaker 2

Spur new ideas.

00:10:30 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

The really interesting thing that often comes up is that I will say something in all earnestness, and the audience will collapse in fits of laughter, and I will go.

00:10:40 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

I I hadn't thought that was funny at all. And then I understand the kind of humour in it. I mean, humour is often related to an unexpected twist or turn in a story, and often science gives you that. So I've been quite struck by times when I've been just thinking about telling us something quite seriously and the audience.

00:11:00 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Laughs. And then that's really interesting to recognize as a reaction, because then I can I can play to that next time and understand that that's that's giving me an emotional engagement with the audience that I didn't realize was there when I.

00:11:15 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Sort of first cooked up.

00:11:16 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Whole project.

00:11:17 Speaker 2

That's interesting.

00:11:22 Speaker 2

Yeah. How have you found the festival so far? You just revive.

00:11:26 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

So I've been involved in this festival for years. I think the first time I came was maybe way back in 2006 or something. So it's really interesting to see the festival change over the years and.

00:11:39 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

And I'm really excited to see it's it's incredibly vibrant this year and I think you know, I'm involved in several different.

00:11:46 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Events here which I think really illustrates the range of things that the festival is trying to tackle. John has many festivals out as a music festival, literature and the Science Festival, but I think what's nice is seeing a bit of bleed between the the, the, the different festivals. So you know, I'm doing a music event.

00:12:06 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

This evening, with a composer looking at the idea of composing pieces of music for planets beyond our solar system, Holst, who has obviously a connection to Cheltenham, wrote about our planets. But now we've discovered planets in other solar systems, so.

00:12:23 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

An event about a musical interpretation of these other weird planets, I think is a really exciting direction for the festivals. So you know, that could have been just in the music festival, but here it is in the Science Festival. And then yesterday we did an event about the science of deception and that had a lot of psychology but also stories.

00:12:44 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

And and the the television series traitors. Somebody came to tell about their experiences of that. And then I'm doing an event about my book about games. So I I I think.

00:12:56 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Quite excited just by the range of events that the festival was put on.

00:13:00 Speaker 2

This year, yeah, I was speaking to Marique Navy as well. And she was saying that one of her main objectives is to take everyday things, I suppose, and show the scientific value of that in a way that everyone can understand.

00:13:16 Speaker 2

And and I think your more books and then should be a really good example of that. Taking something like connect 4 for example and showing this or decisions that you might make on a scientific level.

00:13:29 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

You know, I have a similar philosophy with how I try and deliver complex mathematical stories, which is.

00:13:36 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

To try and find a way in through something that people.

00:13:40 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

So.

00:13:40 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Comfortable with so you know this recent project.

00:13:44 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Who doesn't like playing games? I mean, there are some people who don't like playing games, and most people do, and everyone have a particular game they they like playing and that seemed a very powerful way because I think games are, well, the thesis of the book is games are a way of playing mathematics. There is mathematics hiding behind every game, and if you understand that maths, it can give you an edge. So.

00:14:04 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

So I I think I've used a similar philosophy to the the one the festival is taking that yeah, if you take something like music or or games or architecture.

00:14:15 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Or or just things in everyday life. So another of my books, the number mysteries, took a lot of things like tea bags for example, and the fact that tetrahedrons are used in tea bags. Why is that? What's so important in that shape? So I I think that's a very clever way to to bring people who might have an anxiety.

00:14:36 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

About especially about mathematics into the tents and then to be able to show them that there is mathematics hiding behind the things they love.

00:14:44 Speaker 2

Do you have any other strategies for making your ideas a bit more comprehensible?

00:14:47

OK.

00:14:50 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

I I think the key thing is storytelling.

00:14:53 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

That in a way you could say science is storytelling about our universe and story telling that's consistent with experimental data, you know. So but every every theory is a story about how we think these characters work and are put together. So I think for me, that's.

00:15:14 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Very strong.

00:15:15 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Wrong idea. That one needs to keep in mind that you're always telling a story, and so when it comes to a festival like this, that story is being performed. So when I do work with my undergraduate scene and graduates in Oxford about outreach, we have a A, a nice program encouraging students to go outside of just.

00:15:35 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Doing their.

00:15:36 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Themes. I always try and impress on them that every time they get up, even when you're giving a lecture or seminar, you aren't giving a performance. So you got to think of that as a bit of theatre, a bit of theater that you're going to try and take people on a journey in the hour or whatever it is.

00:15:52 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

To understand the new ideas that you're coming up with, and if you forget that you're gonna lose your audience. And I think that that for me the element.

00:16:00 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Sort of remembering that it's a little performance, even if you're giving.

00:16:04 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

A very high level.

00:16:06 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Talk about your academic work. So that's why I feel that the work I've done for the public actually helps me in the work I do as a research mathematician. Because I I I apply the same ideas.

00:16:19 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

To to help me to communicate better to my colleagues. And so one of the exciting projects I'm working on at the moment is a theatre project. So I I've, I've done quite a lot of work with theatre companies complicity I.

00:16:33 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

Help them with a disappearing number which is their take on the story of Heidi and Ramanujan. And out of that grew another play that I wrote and performed in. It was a 2 hander with one of the actresses complicity, but now I've written a new play. It's called the axiom of choice. It's a play for four actors. I'm written it and I'm Co directing it with a.

00:16:53 Prof Marcus du Sautoy

A young director that I met through my theatrical kind of adventures, and we're very excitingly taking it on tour to India because it has a big India theme in it, a lot about Indian mathematics and Indian philosophy in the autumn. Yeah, I'm. I'm very excited about the place.