Interview: Marcus du Sautoy talks maths

I caught up with Marcus du Sautoy of Oxford's Mathematical Institute to ask him about his experiences filming BBC Four's The Story of Maths, which starts Monday 6 October...

OxSciBlog: Why is the history of maths important?
Marcus du Sautoy: We tend to teach mathematics both at school and at university in a very ahistorical fashion. Yet for many people I think knowing where it all came from would provide a powerful context and narrative in which to frame the mathematical journey. If ever you wondered why a bit of mathematics was created it pays to look back at the history of where it came from. Because mathematics is a subject which builds upon the discoveries of previous generations rather than knocking them down, it has an in-built connection to history. The results proved by the Ancient Greek or medieval Indian mathematicians are as true today as when they were proved centuries ago.

OSB: What are the challenges of portraying maths on TV?
MdS: TV has been very scared of doing mathematics because they couldn't understand what you would see. It is true that the abstract nature of mathematics makes it sometimes difficult to find a visual way to bring the subject alive. But the trick we've used is to mirror the intellectual journey with a physical journey across space and time. The narrative of the physical trip we made from Syria through Greece to China then India on to Europe, Russia and then America provides a driving force to the intellectual journey through the history of maths. We've gone for a Palin meets Bronowski approach.

OSB: Were there any scary moments during filming?
MdS: Riding wild horses across the Atlas Mountains. The Persian poet Omar Khayyam was also an excellent mathematician. To depict his romantic, exciting character my director decided to have me riding across the mountains on horseback. The horses we hired in Morocco where we filmed the sequence are not your sedentary English variety but were wild horses that loved to gallop. My heart was pumping wildly after we'd done several takes. My director only told me afterwards that he hadn't included that sequence on the health and safety form. 

OSB: How might the series change the way people think about mathematics?
MdS: I think most people have the impression that mathematics was somehow handed down to us as some finished product in a text book. I think it will be very enpowering for people to see that mathematics was created by people struggling with new ideas, finding it difficult but then understanding it. The idea of negative numbers, for example, took centuries for mathematicians in Europe to get to grips with. Also it is important to show how mathematics grew out of very practical problems of navigating and understanding the world around us. I think viewers will enjoy seeing how different cultures across the world contributed different chapters to The Story of Maths.

Marcus du Sautoy is a Professor at Oxford University's Mathematical Institute.

Your comments

• It was great!

  Shahin | 03 Feb 09

  As a PhD student of applied linguistics who is interested in academic writing in...

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