41 Quotes by Marcus du Sautoy

The reason why we do maths is because it’s like poetry. It’s about patterns, and that really turned me on. It made me feel that maths was in tune with the other things I liked doing.

The stage is like a laboratory where you can run theatrical experiments, imposing interesting conditions on the cast or story and seeing how they pan out. Each new play is like creating a tiny virtual universe enclosed by the confines of the stage.

I’m obviously attuned to pick up mathematics whenever I can see it. But in Mozart there is a lot of conscious use of mathematical symbolism and numbers in order to try and give messages.

The knowledge of what we are ignorant of seems to expand faster than our catalogue of breakthroughs.

I also fell in love with Borges. He is a mathematician’s writer. His short stories are like mathematical proofs, delicately constructed and with ideas laced together effortlessly. Each step is taken with precision and watertight logic, yet the narrative is full of surprising twists and turns.

The first algorithm to win its creators a Nobel Prize – originally formulated by two mathematicians, David Gale and Lloyd Shapley, in 1962.

Mathematics is a place where you can do things which you can't do in the real world.

Mathematics has beauty and romance. It's not a boring place to be, the mathematical world. It's an extraordinary place; it's worth spending time there.

The point is with good maths skills you have just wonderful opportunities and if you don't have good maths skills, there are just so many things that you won't be able to do.