Marcus du Sautoy

Du Sautoy is an atheist but has stated that as holder of the Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science his focus is going to be "very much on the science and less on religion," perhaps suggesting a difference of emphasis compared to his predecessor in the post, Professor Richard Dawkins. He has described his own religion as being "Arsenal – football", as he sees religion as wanting to belong to a community. Du Sautoy is a supporter of Common Hope, an organisation that helps people in Guatemala.

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.

In a 2006 article published in Seed magazine, du Sautoy discussed the Hilbert-Pólya conjecture: a way for advances in quantum physics to provide insight into the Riemann hypothesis.

Du Sautoy was awarded the Berwick Prize in 2001 by the London Mathematical Society for the publication of outstanding mathematical research. In 2009 he won the Michael Faraday Prize from the Royal Society of London for "excellence in communicating science to UK audiences". Du Sautoy was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2010 New Year Honours "for services to Science". In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society and in 2016 a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Marcus Peter Francis du Sautoy OBE FRS (/d ʊ ˈ s oʊ t ɔɪ / ; born 26 August 1965) is a British mathematician, author, and populariser of science and mathematics. In 1996, he was awarded the Title of Distinction of Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and in 2008, he was appointed to the Simonyi Professorship for the Public Understanding of Science and a fellowship at New College. He was formerly a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and Wadham College, Oxford. He was previously President of the Mathematical Association, an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Senior Media Fellow, and a Royal Society University Research Fellow.

Du Sautoy was born in London to Bernard du Sautoy, employed in the computer industry, and Jennifer du Sautoy, who left the Foreign Office to raise her children. He grew up in Henley-on-Thames. His grandfather, Peter du Sautoy (1912–1995), was chairman of the publisher Faber and Faber, and managed the estates of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. Du Sautoy was educated at Gillotts Comprehensive School and King James's Sixth Form College (now Henley College) and Wadham College, Oxford, where he was awarded a first class honours degree in Mathematics. In 1991 he completed a doctorate in mathematics on discrete groups, analytic groups and Poincaré series, supervised by Dan Segal.