Richard Dawkins (Professor Satan as creationists would have him) has retired from the Chair of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford and will be succeeded by Marcus du Sautoy. Mathematician follows biologist.As if making his CV public de Sautoy has just completed a four-part series The History of Maths on BBC4 which left me with mixed feelings. Television has popularised “dumbing down” but here was a rare example of “clevering up”. And I’m not talking about such brain-crackers as the Riemann Hypothesis.
Earlier du Sautoy paid tribute to work done in the Arab world, China and India (plus Greece of course) on the basics of geometry and algebra. The trouble is he was just too damned quick. There was something about base number systems which he illustrated with pebbles and you’d have thought he was doing the three-card confidence trick. With fifteen seconds on the subject I might have grasped it; given only ten I was lost.
Will du Sautoy be less controversial than his predecessor? I’m not too sure. Parts of the maths series were backed by classical music which isn’t a crime in itself. But it’s one thing to accompany Newton’s fluxions with Bach counterpoint (there’s plenty of it to go around) but it’s quite another to use the initial duet from Figaro as musical wallpaper. Yes I know Figaro was measuring up (Geddit?) his bed but with music like that you’re inclined to attend to the background not the foreground. Next time, Marcus, use some forgettable rock.
