On Tuesday, I attended a Maths Promoters Network event at De Morgan House at which Marcus du Sautoy gave a talk on public engagement with mathematics. This talk was a very personal one on Marcus’ experience of dealing with the media and was very interesting. An interesting point was Marcus’ belief that it was valuable to accept requests for silly faux-mathematical stories from the media if (and only if) a serious mathematical message could be attached.

Marcus was keen to emphasise the importance of mathematical research alongside maths communication and shared the quote from David Hilbert:

“A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man [or woman] whom you meet on the street.”