Her most memorable program for me was her 2018 program "Contagion" which modelled a virus outbreak among volunteers in the town of Haslemere, UK, using an app measuring Bluetooth proximity.
Guess which town contained the UK's Covid patient zero a year later!
And didn't the NHS app use Bluetooth proximity to alert you if you'd been in contact with a COVID case early in the pandemic? A nice case of life imitating art.
What I love most is that Hannah Fry didn't get into the Cambridge undergraduate(?) math program (maths programme for you Brits) but became a math professor at Cambridge. Go Hannah!
The Leelavati Award is an award for outstanding contribution to public outreach in mathematics. It is named after the 12th-century mathematical treatise "Lilavati" devoted to arithmetic, algebra, and the decimal system written by the Indian mathematician Bhāskara II, also known as Bhaskara Achārya. In the book the author posed, in verse form, a series of problems in (elementary) arithmetic to one Leelavati (perhaps his daughter) and followed them up with hints to solutions. This work appears to have been the main source of learning arithmetic and algebra in medieval India. The work was also translated into Persian and was influential in West Asia
I really love Hannah, great communicator and keeps it interesting. If you're interested, I'd also recommend Brian Cox as a similarly fantastic representative for maths & science.
I’m a big fan of her current podcast - The Rest Is Science. Informative and entertaining as well as being easy to listen to (I’m not a fan of many audio-only shows, so listenability is a big factor for me)
Completely agree. I’d recommend her book “Hello world: How to be human in the age of the machine” to anyone who isn’t familiar. It’s one of those books where even if you know about programming, AI etc it’s worth reading because she hasn’t dumbed down the content even though she’s made it accessible to folks who don’t.
Fun fact: I heard an interview with her and she said she got into maths because her family are all crazy about Formula One racing and she thought working on the aerodynamics etc would be interesting. She eventually got her “dream job” working on aerodynamics of F1 cars and found it really boring because she didn’t really get to do maths, all she did was write python simulations, leave them to run overnight and read the results in the morning, so she phoned her supervisor (who had worked his personal contacts to introduce her for the F1 job) and went back to working in his lab.
I met her when she gave a lecture in London about algorithms as part of a promotional tour for the book.
We chatted about Ada Lovelace (a topic she also did a documentary about for the BBC) and she was exactly the same in person as her personality is on the TV / Radio / Podcasts.
That was definitely a highlight of that year for me.
She has an actor's control of her countenance, which allows her control over that mischievous, slightly conspiratorial tone she uses when she wants you to know something really fun, or be excited by some knowledge.
I love to recommend this charming little clip from a fun sort of "science of Christmas" short film for kids she appeared in with the brilliant Lenny Rush:
Her tiktok channel is one of my favorites. Her ability to tell a maths story in such a clever way has always given me pause to watch. Congratulations to such a gifted communicator!
Her most memorable program for me was her 2018 program "Contagion" which modelled a virus outbreak among volunteers in the town of Haslemere, UK, using an app measuring Bluetooth proximity.
Guess which town contained the UK's Covid patient zero a year later!
Edit: found it here https://youtu.be/yISdMLbO0Wc?is=T-Tq9LwzLgbusuoe
1) Leelavati Award - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leelavati_Award
The Leelavati Award is an award for outstanding contribution to public outreach in mathematics. It is named after the 12th-century mathematical treatise "Lilavati" devoted to arithmetic, algebra, and the decimal system written by the Indian mathematician Bhāskara II, also known as Bhaskara Achārya. In the book the author posed, in verse form, a series of problems in (elementary) arithmetic to one Leelavati (perhaps his daughter) and followed them up with hints to solutions. This work appears to have been the main source of learning arithmetic and algebra in medieval India. The work was also translated into Persian and was influential in West Asia
2) Līlāvatī (the work itself) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C4%ABl%C4%81vat%C4%AB
The video version is also a lot of fun to watch while doing dishes
Fun fact: I heard an interview with her and she said she got into maths because her family are all crazy about Formula One racing and she thought working on the aerodynamics etc would be interesting. She eventually got her “dream job” working on aerodynamics of F1 cars and found it really boring because she didn’t really get to do maths, all she did was write python simulations, leave them to run overnight and read the results in the morning, so she phoned her supervisor (who had worked his personal contacts to introduce her for the F1 job) and went back to working in his lab.
We chatted about Ada Lovelace (a topic she also did a documentary about for the BBC) and she was exactly the same in person as her personality is on the TV / Radio / Podcasts.
That was definitely a highlight of that year for me.
She has an actor's control of her countenance, which allows her control over that mischievous, slightly conspiratorial tone she uses when she wants you to know something really fun, or be excited by some knowledge.
I love to recommend this charming little clip from a fun sort of "science of Christmas" short film for kids she appeared in with the brilliant Lenny Rush:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MMZ_FCIgEEo