Para endender a Ciência, um matemático substitui um biólogo

Marcus du Sautoy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Marcus Peter Francis du Sautoy

Born
26 August 1965 (1965-08-26) (age 44)[1][2]London, England

Doctoral advisor
Daniel Segal

Notable awards
Berwick Prize (2001)

Marcus Peter Francis du Sautoy (born 26 August 1965) is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. Formerly a Fellow of All Souls College, and Wadham College, he is now a Fellow of New College. He is currently an EPSRC Senior Media Fellow and was previously a Royal Society University Research Fellow. His academic work concerns mainly group theory and number theory. In October 2008, he was appointed to the Simonyi Professorship for the Public Understanding of Science, succeeding Richard Dawkins.[3]

He is known for his work popularizing mathematics. He has been named by The Independent on Sunday as one of the UK's leading scientists. 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. He writes for The Times and The Guardian and has appeared several times on BBC Radio 4 and television. He presented the television programme, Mind Games, on BBC Four. He has also written numerous academic articles and books on mathematics, the most recent being Finding Moonshine.

Du Sautoy is a supporter of Common Hope, an organisation that helps people in Guatemala.[4]

Biography

He grew up in Henley-on-Thames and was educated 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 currently lives in London with his wife and three children. He plays football and the trumpet.

In March, 2006, his article Prime Numbers Get Hitched was published on Seed Magazine's website.[5] In it he explained how the number 42, mentioned in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as the answer to everything, is related to the Riemann zeta function. He has also published an article in the scientific magazine New Scientist.

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. The venue for the 2006 Christmas Lectures was the Institution of Engineering and Technology's headquarters at Savoy Place, London.

Wikinews has related news: Wikinews interviews English mathematician Marcus du Sautoy

Du Sautoy is an atheist, but has stated that as holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science his focus is going to be "very much on the science and less on religion."[6] He has described his own religion as being "Arsenal - football."[7]

PS: Esta última observação parece ser uma referência velada à atuação controversa de Richard Dawkins na Cátedra Simonyi...