Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Mathematician who discovered non-repeating tiles and wrote The Emperor's New Mind arguing computers cannot outsmart the human mind.
On the island
Eight records
Mass in B minor, BWV 232: Crucifixus
Taverner Consort and Players, directed by Andrew Parrott
Yes. Well, I I had this sort of image that I'd probably take entirely Bach, but that might be boring to people, I suppose. But music, there is this relation to mathematics, which I think you find particularly with Bach. But you you sort of use the mathematical things like subtle key changes and things like that in a way which creates incredible emotion. And I think uh one of the places you find this to an enormous extent is in Bach's B minor Mass.
Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467: Andante
Alfred Brendel with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner
Well, I think an important part of upbringing. In my family was my father's interest also in music. He had a great appreciation of music. He also wrote music and and i in a sort of amateur way and and even pieces where you had to turn the page upside down to finish the piece and so on. One of his great interests was was Mozart, so I I'd like to have part of the concerto number twenty-one.
Romeo and Juliet: Dance of the Knights
Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Seiji Ozawa
My wife always accuses me of choosing gloomy pieces of music, so this is a a nice antidote to that. It's also something where where I went with my wife in Vienna to to the ballet and we heard Procofiev's Romeo and Juliet, and I just want to choose part of that, which is very uplifting.
Well, I wanted to have something by Roslyn Turek. I heard her play Bach when I was a graduate student in Cambridge, and and I find it it's really wonderful to hear it first hand. And I've just chosen a piece which I think illustrates um this, the Bach fantasy in C minor.
String Quintet in C major, D. 956: Adagio
Emerson String Quartet and Mstislav Rostropovich
I want to have something of Schubert, uh, because I really have a a soft f spot for Schubert, and I d I I finally settled on the string quintet in C major.
Cantata No. 101, 'Nimm von uns, Herr, du treuer Gott', BWV 101: Chorus
Tölzer Knabenchor and Concentus Musicus Wien, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt
I I I I think I s expressed at the begin beginning that I would like to have all Bach if I really had my choice. In fact, probably what I would have done would be to have all Bach cantat cantatas, and I've just selected one out of these, which I think is one of the more Quite extraordinary pieces. It's really extraordinarily complicated and discordant in ways which I think it will take me all my time on the desert island to figure out what's going on.
String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat major, Op. 130: Große Fuge
I've chosen a lot of Bach, but I want to say that there are a lot of other composers that I I feel for a lot, and uh one of these is is uh the Grosser Fuga from the string quartet number thirteen.
Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043: Allegro
Academy of Ancient Music, conducted by Christopher Hogwood
One of my problems is is that uh sort of thought about, you know, should I branch out and have some some popular piece of music or something. But my wife was very insistent, no, she doesn't like it when people do that, if you're really a classical person. But uh the thing of classical music she really loves, and it's something which I've loved almost from birth, I would say. I think it's one of the most perfect pieces of music ever written, the Bach double violin concerto.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:11Did you lie in bed as a boy thinking about numbers?
Well, there was one particular occasion I remember … about young, probably about ten or so. When I … noticed that three and a half times one half was equal to three and a half plus one half. And I mentioned this to my brother Oliver, and he then went away and worked out some formula, you see. And I was so amazed by this … that it was one of the things that that set me on my course as a mathematician.
Presenter asks
3:48Did you intend mathematics to be your life?
Secretly I was going to be a brain surgeon. I was going to discover the secret of consciousness or something by opening up people's brains. And it was at a certain stage when I was at school … I was going up to the headmaster believing I was going to be a doctor. And he said, well, what do you want to do in your final two years? And I said, well, I'd like to do biology, chemistry, and mathematics. And he said, no, you can't do that. If you're going to do biology, you can't do mathematics. Mathematics, you can't do biology. … And at that stage, I just didn't want to lose the maths. I said mathematics, physics, and chemistry.
Presenter asks
10:38Was mathematics a kind of refuge [from your parents' arguments]?
It was sort of curious because my parents quite often had arguments, and I always felt somehow that my father's arguments were totally ridiculous, and my mother was right. But on the other hand, I had this kind of emotional feeling with some of the things he was saying, and I couldn't quite figure out what it was. But it's the sort of thing I couldn't face in a way. There were these conflicts. Doing mathematics is a way of retreating from the world, in the world of people. There's no answer about what's right and what's wrong. Whereas in mathematics you have this rock-solid base, and it's somewhere you can stand and you can build a world around that.
The keepsakes
The luxury
a specially constructed nineteen-note piano
What I would like to do in the few weeks that I have is to try and compose music on this wonderful piano.
Presenter asks
11:58Was your father driving you and your brothers to be high achievers?
I don't think it was quite like that. I think it was more That he had a tremendous excitement in science, which he shared with us. … Not because he wanted me to go head or anything like that, but just because he wanted the pleasure of showing me the beauties of calculus.
Presenter asks
23:20Is it possible to describe twister theory in simple terms?
I think the shortest … short answer to that is no, but I can say what it's trying to do, if you like. It's trying to form a bridge between the physics of space time and that means really Einstein's general theory of relativity, that's space and time and gravity and the physics of the small, which is quantum mechanics.
Presenter asks
29:20Does it bother you that you have upset a lot of people in your professional life by challenging conventional thought?
I don't like upsetting people, no. But on the other hand, I do feel strongly I need to say what I think. uh if it's important to say it. And if that upsets people, I find that disturbing. But it's not that I'm doing something because I want to upset anybody.
“I was always somebody who had to sort of work things out for myself, I think. I mean, I was always very slow. You might think being a mathematician I was good at doing sums and all that. But I once actually got moved down a class because I couldn't do mental arithmetic.”
“What a computer is not is aware, in it certainly in my view of what things how things work, that computers can compute, that's what they're there for, but they don't actually know what they're doing, if you like. They're not conscious.”
“Doing mathematics is a way of retreating from the world, in the world of people. There's no answer about what's right and what's wrong. Whereas in mathematics you have this rock-solid base, and it's somewhere you can stand and you can build a world around that.”