Marcus Du Sautoy Quotes & Sayings

It's important to me that no one can say I'm not pumping out high-level research. — Marcus Du Sautoy

Viruses like symmetrical shapes because symmetry provides a very simple means for them to multiply, and that is what makes viral diseases so infectious - in fact, that's what 'virulent' means. Traditionally, symmetry has been something people have found aesthetically appealing, whether it is seen in a diamond, a flower or the face of a supermodel. But symmetry isn't always so desirable. Some of the most deadly viruses on the biological books, from influenza to herpes, from polio to the AIDS virus, are constructed using the shape of an icosahedron. Is — Marcus Du Sautoy

Theory is needed to tell you where to look. — Marcus Du Sautoy

When people ask me what my religion is, I say it's the Arsenal. — Marcus Du Sautoy

The best mobile phone had the best mathematician. They know how to fit a huge amount of data into a small amount of space. How to do things efficiently, how to do them cleverly. — Marcus Du Sautoy

Artists realise that mathematicians have a way of looking at the world that can make them see things differently. — Marcus Du Sautoy

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

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

The power of mathematics is often to change one thing into another, to change geometry into language. — Marcus Du Sautoy

My big thesis is that although the world looks messy and chaotic, if you translate it into the world of numbers and shapes, patterns emerge and you start to understand why things are the way they are. — Marcus Du Sautoy

The universe cannot be read until we have learnt the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word. Without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth. This — Marcus Du Sautoy

I think my primary audience is in some sense an adult audience, because I think that will then have a knock-on effect for children. — Marcus Du Sautoy

Of course, physics prevents us from dividing things beyond a certain limit, determined by what is called the Planck constant. This is because, according to physicists, it is actually impossible to measure a distance smaller than 10-34m without creating a black hole that would swallow up the measuring device. — Marcus Du Sautoy

We need scientists and mathematicians explaining why they are excited about their subjects but also why they are important for solving social problems, informing political debate and for the economy. — Marcus Du Sautoy

If you can make yourself symmetrical, you're sending out a sign that you've got good genes, you've got a good upbringing and therefore you'll make a good mate. — Marcus Du Sautoy

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. — 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. — Marcus Du Sautoy

Primes are the atoms of the arithmetic - the hydrogen and oxygen of the world of numbers — Marcus Du Sautoy

It's my belief that you can take everyone down a logical path if you take them slowly enough, and the trouble is that mathematical brains can get scrambled a little bit on the way. You get a bad teacher, it messes you up for the rest of the journey. — Marcus Du Sautoy

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. — Marcus Du Sautoy

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. — Marcus Du Sautoy

For any scientist the real challenge is not to stay within the secure garden of the known but to venture out into the wilds of the unknown. — Marcus Du Sautoy

If I'm flying to China, I can sit and think about a problem. Other scientists have to go to the lab. I'm always thinking about maths, even when I'm doing other things. A lot of the time you're going up blind alleys and it's very frustrating, but then you have a sudden rush of ideas. You can live off that for quite some time. — Marcus Du Sautoy

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. — Marcus Du Sautoy

Some might question whether it makes sense to talk about setting up the experiment and running it again with exactly the same conditions--that it is, in fact, impossible. Locally, you might get the conditions exactly the same, but you have to embed the experiment in the universe, and that has moved on. You can't rewind the wave function of the universe and rerun it. The universe is a one-time-only experiment that includes us as part of its wave function, and there's no going back. — Marcus Du Sautoy

Rather than opera, football is more like ballet or a chess game. You can really see it in a team like Arsenal, especially when Dennis Bergkamp was playing. He seemed to be able to read the game like a chessboard and knew where a player would be several seconds later and put the ball there for him. — Marcus Du Sautoy

You know, I'm not terribly fast at my times tables, because that's not what I think mathematics is about. — Marcus Du Sautoy

The wonderful thing about maths is it's a totally logical subject, and a pathway has been marked out. I think a lot of these things can be crystallised in something quite essential, that people can get. If I can't explain it, I realise that's probably because I don't completely understand it myself. — Marcus Du Sautoy

I think science is a foreign land for many people, so I think of my role as an ambassador's job. — Marcus Du Sautoy