Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Professor of mathematics at Oxford, world-class reputation for his work, and a communicator popularizing mathematics through books and TV programmes.
On the island
Eight records
Frühling (from Four Last Songs)
Lucia Popp, London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Klaus Tennstedt
This piece of music just does something to my body. Every time I hear it, the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, and this is why I love music.
It's an absolutely magical piece. You get these just solo trumpet lines individually, and then they're all played together in this amazing cacophony, which you realize how amazing Britain is at weaving these themes together.
Prelude to ParsifalFavourite
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
I love the tha the way he sort of is constructing some huge mathematical proof, I think, with these all these um themes, leit motifs, which he interweaves in as complex a way and sort of gets this resolution at the end of the six hours.
I Know a Bank (from A Midsummer Night's Dream)
James Bowman, Trinity Boys Choir, City of London Sinfonia, conducted by Richard Hickox
One of my favourite plays that I did at university was Midsummer Night's Dream in Maudlin Deer Park, which is magical. And I played uh Flute the Bellows Mender, which is a really fun part. I I love this operatic version of the play.
Joie du Sang des Étoiles (from Turangalîla-Symphonie)
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Simon Rattle
I went for this one, which is a really emotional piece of music which I was listening to when I was phoned up and told I got a fellowship in All Souls College, which was a really major moment in life.
Look, My Castle Gleams and Brightens (from Bluebeard's Castle)
Éva Marton, Samuel Ramey, Hungarian State Orchestra, conducted by Ádám Fischer
This is Bartock's Bluebeard's castle and this is the moment when Bluebeard opens the fourth door and he opens it onto this secret garden and that is I think what my teacher did for me when he took me round the back of the maths block and he said you know find out what maths is really about and he opened this door and my god Bartock got exactly right what it feels like to suddenly see mathematics for what it really is.
String Quartet No. 8 (Second Movement)
I've always loved uh since I was a kid, but I love him even more when I discovered in fact he's a great football fan, uh which I am as well... I've chosen uh s the string quartet number eight, which is a really delicate piece of music.
The Many Rend the Skies with Loud Applause (from Alexander's Feast)
Bach Choir of Stockholm, Concentus Musicus Wien, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt
This is a piece I played the trumpet in actually when I was um a student. It's a magical piece of music, uh and I've actually chosen an early music version of this because I love the kind of grittiness of this recording.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:09Where does [emotion] come into mathematics?
Well, for me doing mathematics is a real emotional buzz, that moment when you've been working on something, you just can't see where it's going and then suddenly you get this rush of adrenaline when you see actually how something works out. I mean, it's really that aha moment. That is a really emotional moment.
Presenter asks
2:08What happened [at school] up to that point?
Yeah, up to that point. I really wasn't interested in maths because I didn't really like learning my multiplication tables and wasn't particularly good at them. But I was really lucky to have a teacher at my comprehensive school who, about 12 or 13, picked me out in the middle of the class and said, Okay, I want to see you after the lesson. And during the break, he took me round the back of the maths block. And then he took out his break time cigar and said, Look, DeSoto, I think you should find out what maths is really about, because it isn't what we're doing in the classroom, it's something much more exciting. And he recommended a few books for me, which just really opened this world up for me.
Presenter asks
12:35Did [seeing your father burst into tears] make you feel any sense of obligation about what you must achieve once you were there [at Oxford]?
The keepsakes
The book
Hermann Hesse
It's all about this sort of futuristic game which sort of tries to combine mathematics, music, philosophy into one sort of activity. I think I that's what I've been trying to do in my life, play The Glass Speed Game.
The luxury
I'm going to take my trumpet with me because I don't get enough time to play it at the moment. I'd love to just be able to sit on my desert island and play along to this music.
No, uh not really. In some sense, I kinda ma mucked up my first year actually because I was doing far too much music and um theatre and I actually got a a second in my um exam... But in my third year I then realized um that that's when I kind of went on my desert island and realized, okay, my dream is to become a mathematician. Um and if I'm gonna do that I have to get a first at the end of this. So I think I'm quite good at just going from one thing to another and just totally dedicating myself 100%.
Presenter asks
15:08Can you explain a little of what happened [when your second child died and your wife became gravely ill]?
Yeah, it's um It was like a bomb going off... the baby had died um and we had to go through this awful thing of delivering a a a dead baby... When my uh wife then delivered the baby, then she went into this kind of free fall, she was bleeding out... the last thing she said to me was I'm dying. And frankly, she uh she was... for about two weeks she was in intensive care in a coma and then she came out of this and uh you know, I felt like I've got my wife back... the solace of mathematics, I'm afraid I did that classic male thing of just burying myself in a world of security, and something where things don't blow up like that.
Presenter asks
30:41As an atheist, you send your son to a faith school. Are you comfortable with that?
A little bit, but actually I think that's the point that religion is actually very much a cultural thing. It's a tribal thing. And my wife's Israeli, she's Jewish, she's moved to London. It's very important for her to keep her community and culture alive... You know, for me, my religion is arsenal or football. That binds me together in a community. And so I think for me, it isn't inconsistent to send my son to a Jewish school because I think he's getting a sort of cultural framework and he's sharp enough to ask the questions about the ideas of God and religion.
“What I feel people think mathematics is, is just kind of scales and arpeggios, and what I was lucky to hear when I was at school was actually the real music of mathematics. And I think if you open that up to people, of a sudden you see the emotional side.”
“I think we're evolutionary programmed to do mathematics. It's how we survived. The fact that we can judge distances in the forest, jungle, or whatever, that you can pick out things with symmetry, that you can count things. Say there's more of us than there are of them, we can attack them. Those who could count survived.”
“I can't give complete understanding of the things that I do, but maybe I can give them a taste.”