Hannah Fry Wins the Leelavati Prize in 2026 for Mathematics Outreach

363 pointsposted 12 hours ago
by agnishom

58 Comments

kitd

7 hours ago

Well deserved.

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

skerit

5 hours ago

And on her podcast with Vsauce she said the reason they chose that town was because their budget was so low and they could sleep over at a crew member's family there.

willis936

4 hours ago

Which episode? I subscribe but I don't have the attention surplus to listen to them all.

inamorty

2 hours ago

https://youtu.be/ClqvH-uG2Mw

Hannah Predicted a Pandemic | The Rest Is Science

nephihaha

2 hours ago

So did Bill Gates in his Ted talk six years before and the Event 201 table top exercise six months before lockdown.

The second one also managed to predict the use of trusted media and keeping intercontinental flights going throughout the pandemic.

dspillett

5 hours ago

> UK's Covid patient zero a year later!

I thought our first confirmed case was in York, very late in January 2020, who was staying at the Staycity hotel while visiting a family member attending the University here. That hotel is just around the corner from where we do martial arts of an evening, so we were acutely aware of that bit of news. Though IIRC they were from another country, so might not count depending on how "UK's Covid patient zero" is defined.

kitd

5 hours ago

Yeah, you're probably right. Looking back at news reports, it looks like the Haslemere case may have been the first person infected within the UK, ie they hadn't been abroad.

pmg101

7 hours ago

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.

kitd

6 hours ago

Yeah, just watching the first few minutes of the program, it's astonishing how prophetic it was.

rustyhancock

3 hours ago

It's not prophetic. Prophetic means it predicts the future, this is epidimlogical science being applied as intended. It didn't predict the future it designed it because we applied it.

Contagion used GPS logging to predict who was where an applied a random transmission risk based on that.

The actual origin of the Bluetooth proximity and duration tracking was from FluPhone back in 2010 or so[0]

Human contact networks, and epidemiology is a long standing science COVID just made that apparent for the lay public.

Quarantines have existed for centuries, contact tracing is Victorian (smallpox mostly),social distancing, It was all application of research that largely already existed.

[0] https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/srg/netos/projects/archive...

thegabriele

an hour ago

Since you seems well versed in the matter...Did we learn something new from the whole covid experience?

ErrantX

5 hours ago

Congrats Hannah. I'll pile on with my own anecdote; I've run an internal conference at work for several years and we always book an external speaker.

She remains my (close) second favourite[1], with a choose your own adventure talk about algorithms. It was genuinely great, and warm, and thoughtful (a lot of it was about the risks of algorithms, which is very relevant for us).

This was... 2021 so mid COVID (yep it was remote) and so just before she became really big. We've worked with a lot of external speakers since, many of them very good or very slick, but she was the only one that was clearly both brilliant at her topic(s) and also an exceptional communicator.

[1] For the record my favourite is Clifford Agius who is some guy I saw at a local conference who in his spare time from being a commercial pilot builds fully robotic arms for kids - he even lets them give the finger. Great guy and refused to charge us more than a few hundred quid.

vgivanovic

9 hours ago

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!

hunnovi

an hour ago

She is great at popularity regarding mathematics, but her achievements do not seem to be primarily within hardcore mathematical research, more within popularity and communication.

> She is the first Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge,

I am not sure that she is a "math professor", but that she is a "professor of the public understanding of mathematics". The latter seems softer.

mi_lk

5 hours ago

Seems to happen to most top universities, or is there some context I'm missing?

ErrantX

an hour ago

Any elite selection process has high risk for not selecting the best people.

Either due to corruption or, even more likely, institutional biases.

Malcolm Gladwell has a few episodes of revisionist history that looks at some US universities who fall into this trap.

Even with all that said; the chances of a selection process for 17/18 year olds being able to correctly select the best future adults in their field is very low.

Another good example; the number of young geniuses or prodigies (whether maths, chess, acting etc.) who don't make anything of themselves.

rwmj

2 hours ago

Oxford & Cambridge are very selective and entry is very competitive. Unusually for UK universities they hold a separate entrance exam for all courses. (Information about the extra admissions tests done by some universities and some courses: https://www.ucas.com/applying/before-you-apply/what-and-wher....)

Fun fact: When I applied to Cambridge I was interviewed by Mary Beard.

nephihaha

2 hours ago

Entry is to Oxford and Cambridge is by interview. A lot hinges on that.

mttch

5 hours ago

I know another professor where this is also the case!

card_zero

16 minutes ago

Ha, this prize comes with a million rupees cash, which makes it worth about $8 more than a Fields medal.

Correction: $292 less than the Fields, I went through too many layers of currency conversion. Still, it's nearly the same.

tomfakes

9 hours ago

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)

Novosell

5 hours ago

I really like her, but man I find Michael unbearable.

It also just feels too fake to me. I know they already knew the info they just had a strong reaction to, but they're reacting strongly on purpose for the sake of being engaging. I didn't find it annoying to start with, but it got more grating as I tried more episodes.

I recall in one episode she says "That's amazing" or something to that effect, to a fact regarding fluid dynamics. She has a PhD in fluid dynamics. She already knew whatever that fact was.

preuceian

4 hours ago

I feel like they're pretty self-aware about it. I dont mind it, it keeps the episodes engaging and family friendly.

banditelol

6 hours ago

Yesssss

The video version is also a lot of fun to watch while doing dishes

DStiego

5 hours ago

Especially the (slightly frightening) animations they show!

emmelaich

3 hours ago

I also like it a lot, but Hannah is a bit too giggly at times. Michael has some nerdish intonations. But still love it.

nhinck3

8 hours ago

It's also on youtube, so you can watch if you are so inclined.

cush

7 hours ago

It’s my favorite podcast right now!

arlattimore

8 hours ago

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.

AFF87

36 minutes ago

Really well deserved! And to think her whole life's trajectory changed because of her year of saying "yes" to everything

vaylian

9 hours ago

Well deserved. She is an excellent science communicator.

seanhunter

9 hours ago

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.

hnlmorg

6 hours ago

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.

skybrian

9 hours ago

Any online writing that you'd recommend?

rvz

9 hours ago

Agreed. A gifted communicator of over-looked topics in science and mathematics and is well deserved of this prize.

chris_st

33 minutes ago

I really liked her "Uncharted with Hannah Fry" podcast, sorry it ended.

dofm

8 hours ago

She really is an extraordinary communicator.

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

chakintosh

an hour ago

She makes a great duo with Michael from V Sauce

amazingamazing

2 hours ago

interestingly you are starting to see a similar emphasis on outreach in tech these days with "forward deployed engineers" and "ai developer relations". Good to know people realize outreach is important. cheers and celebrations to professor fry!

rramadass

6 hours ago

History and the meaning behind the name, "Leelavati Prize" (https://www.mathunion.org/imu-awards/leelavati-prize);

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

bambax

6 hours ago

She's really nice, fun and engaging. She has a recent video about AI agents selling mugshots that's well made and clear.

urba_

6 hours ago

Truly worth the prize! Sometimes I feel that she is punished by the algorithm, but great content nevertheless

nephihaha

2 hours ago

I get recommended her videos all the time despite not really watching many of them. Her and Jimmy Carr in the UK.

sudo_cowsay

6 hours ago

Made some of my favorite videos on YouTube. Wonderful!

nephihaha

2 hours ago

Well, I'm continually getting her videos suggested to me on YouTube. I'll just say that she has a very BBC manner to her.

chews

6 hours ago

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!

xchip

3 hours ago

Why not 3Blue1Brown, Numberphile or Mathologer?

Jtarii

2 hours ago

Brady has enough awards.