Mathematician Marcus du Sautoy looks at rhythmic complexities in Steve Reich, Messiaen, Ewe music from Ghana and a piece lasting 1000 years. 

Maths and Music: 1/4. Counter Culture

Marcus du Sautoy examines Pythagoras' theories about the harmonious world, the thorny issue of temperament and the 12 tone scale. 

Maths and Music: 2/4 Music Of The Spheres

Marcus du Sautoy reveals the symmetry in Bach's Goldberg Variations, the maths behind bell-ringing and Mozart's obsession with numbers. 

Maths and Music: 3/4 Theme And Variations

Marcus du Sautoy looks at Schoenberg's rectangles, Xenakis's cubes, Messiaen's Mongean shuffle and reveals that there's music in maths. 

Maths and Music: 4/4 Composing With Numbers

Have the Navier-Stokes equations been solved by a mathematician from Kazakhstan?

BBC World Service 24 Hour News: Navier Stokes Equations

Exploring the idea of scientific metaphor with Michael Rosen. Is gravity really like a bowling ball on a sheet, and is the atom really like a mini solar system?

Word of Mouth

The battle over the calculus. Professor Marcus du Sautoy reveals how the great hero of British science is rather less gentlemanly than his German rival. An astronaut and investment analyst pay homage to the enormous power of the calculus.

Newton&Leibniz.mp3

The man who calculated as other men breathe. Professor Marcus du Sautoy on the mathematical omnivore without whom no history of mathematics is complete.

Euler.mp3

Professor Marcus du Sautoy describes the life and mathematics of this Napoleonic soldier, with contributions from musician Brian Eno who loves Fourier's analysis and uses it to create sounds that have never been heard before.

Fourier.mp3

To infinity and beyond with Georg Cantor. Professor Marcus du Sautoy describes the troubled life of this radical mathematician who shocked his colleagues by proving there's more than one infinity. 

Cantor.mp3

Interview on The Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 about my new book Around the World in 80 Games.

BBCTodayGames2023

Interview on BBC London about Around the World in 80 Games

BBCLondonDec2023

In the first programme of my BBC series 5 Shapes I explore the cube: from tasty cubes created by the Oxo factory to the 4 dimensional cube built at the heart of Paris's financial district.

5 Shapes: The Cube

The second programme in my BBC series 5 Shapes features The Pyramid: a classic shape to bury Pharoahs and a triangular influence on modern designers who find inspiration in its simplicity. Though surprisingly rare in buildings, on a smaller scale in nature it is omnipresent.

5 Shapes: the pyramid

In this episode of In Our Time Marcus and Melvyn explore Fermat's Last Theorem. In 1637 the French mathematician Pierre de Fermat scribbled a note in the margin of one of his books. He claimed to have proved a remarkable property of numbers, but gave no clue as to how he'd gone about it. Fermat's theorem became one of the most iconic problems in mathematics and for centuries mathematicians struggled in vain to work out what his proof had been. It was not until 1995 that the puzzle was finally solved by the British mathematician Andrew Wiles.

In Our Time: Fermat's Last Theorem

In this episode of In Our Time Marcus and Melvyn discuss random and pseudorandom numbers. Randomness will be familiar to anybody who’s bought a lottery ticket or shuffled a pack of cards. But there’s also a phenomenon known as pseudo-randomness –numbers which look random but aren’t. So why are these numbers useful and how can they be generated?

In Our Time: random and pseudorandom

In this episode of In Our Time Marcus and Melvyn grapple with the concept of imaginary numbers. Perplexing digits that underpin the majority of technology we take for granted today, from radios to computers to MRI scans; not to mention quantum mechanics. This episode inspired a cartoon in the New Yorker that week entitled "not-particularly-easy-listening radio". Good luck.

In Our Time: imaginary numbers

In this episode of In Our time Marcus and Melvyn discuss the mathematician Kurt Godel and his work. His Incompleteness Theorem revealed that there are true statements in any axiomatic system for numbers that cannot be proved within that system. 

In Our Time: Godel's Incompleteness Theorem

In this episode of In Our Time Marcus and Melvyn discuss the famous Fibonacci Numbers. 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21... they are Nature's favourite numbers. Count the number of petals on a flower and invariably it's a number in the Fibonacci sequence...and if it isn't...that's cos a petal fell off your flower...which is how mathematicians get round exceptions.

In Our Time: The Fibonacci Sequence

In this episode of In Our Time Marcus and Melvyn discuss the Poincaré Conjecture. Celebrating the recent solution of this fundamental conjecture by Grigori Perelman, this episode pulls no punches as we explore the mathematical possibilities for the shape of the universe.

In Our Time: The Poincaré Conjecture

In this episode of In Our Time Marcus and Melvyn discuss Mathematics and Music. Discover why the notes we find harmonic are simply our brains responding to mathematics and how mathematics has been used by many composers from Bach to Berg to frame their compositions. As Bach's student Mizler used to say "Bach's music is the processing of sounding mathematics." 

In Our Time: Mathematics and Music

As part of Radio 3's weekend residency at Wellcome Collection in September 2015 Marcus du Sautoy and soloists from the Aurora Orchestra explore the way patterns and mathematics from nature are found in music from Bach and Mozart to Messiaen and Berg.

Playing With Patterns

My series of essays entitled The Secret Mathematicians untangles the fascinating maths hidden beneath the surface of some of our great contemporary and historical works of art. The first essay explores the intimate connection between architecture and mathematics through the work of Zaha Hadid, Le Corbusier and Palladio. 

The Secret Mathematicians - Architecture

In my fourth essay I reveal that writers, just like musicians and visual artists, have found ways to use maths to structure their writing. From the short stories of Borges to the plays of Stoppard, from Eleanor Catton's Booker prize winning book The Luminaries to the poetry of the Oulipo movement in Paris, mathematics and literature are much more connected than one might imagine.

The Secret Mathematicians - Literature

Mathematician Marcus du Sautoy explains how Iannis Xenakis uses the symmetry of a cube to determine musical parameters in Nomos Alpha for solo cello; Paul Griffiths highlights the composer's innovations in the fields of sound and instrumental writing; and we hear an archive interview in which Xenakis credits his teacher Olivier Messiaen in helping him to find his own compositional voice.

Radio 3's Fifty Modern Classics

Iannis Xenakis's Nomos Alpha

BBC6Music are going "back to school" and inviting teachers from different disciplines to come and inspire Lauren and listeners about their subject. Today it's Mathematics. The interview concludes with a musical choice by Marcus. Find out why he chose Gorillaz 5/4. (Clue: it's all to do with prime numbers)

Lauren Laverne @BBC6Music

How long before AI wins a BAFTA or an Oscar? Listen to my exploration of the impact of AI on the movie industry @RTERadio1 (To find out more check out The Creativity Code @4thEstateBooks)

AI and the movies

Can AI be Creative? Can it navigate the vagaries of natural language? To mark the launch of his new book The Creativity Code Marcus du Sautoy looks at how AI is being programmed to be creative in language and the arts, and what that means for the human touch. Interview begins at 31:23.

Start the Week

The Creativity Code on Start The Week

On Essential Classics on BBC Radio 3 I explored my cultural inspirations with Suzy Klein to coincide with publication of my new book The Creativity Code. First up: Theatre. My choice: Anything for a Quiet Life by Complicite. (18 March 2019)

My Cultural Inspirations: Theatre

In the second episode of my Cultural Inspirations on Essential Classics on BBC Radio 3 I turn to literature. My choice is Borges' Library of Babel. The short story is used in my book The Creativity Code to explore the role of making choices in creativity. (19 March 2019)

Cultural Inspirations: Literature

My third cultural inspiration on BBC Radio 3's Essential Classics comes from the contemporary art world. It's 4900 Farben by Gerhard Richter. In my new book The Creativity Code I talk about the use of randomness in AI to give algorithms a sense of agency. But isn't that just cheating? (20 March 2019)

Cultural Inspirations: Art

In the fourth of my cultural inspirations for BBC Radio 3's Essential Classics I turn to Architecture. My choice is The Alhambra in Granada, a palace celebrating the world of symmetry. In The Creativity Code I discuss whether AI could make a mathematical breakthrough like my discovery of a new symmetrical object in high dimensional space. Can AI create maths?

Cultural Inspirations: Architecture

In the fifth of my cultural inspirations for BBC Radio 3 Essential Classics I turn to music and my choice is Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony. In my book The Creativity Code I talk about the algorithmic nature of music which might make it susceptible to AI.

Cultural Inspirations: Music

Discussion about the concert I have curated and will be introducing with the Oxford Philharmonic featuring Debussy, Stravinsky and Bartok. The concert explores new scales that emerged in the 20th century including the octatonic scale. Interview on BBC Radio 3's In Tune on 9 October 2019.

https://oxfordphil.com/events/128221536/music-maths-2019-10-17

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