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Hannah Fry Wins the Leelavati Prize in 2026 for Mathematics Outreach

23 points5 hoursmaths.cam.ac.uk
vgivanovic2 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!

vaylian2 hours ago

Well deserved. She is an excellent science communicator.

seanhunter2 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.

skybrian2 hours ago

Any online writing that you'd recommend?

rvz2 hours ago

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

dofm2 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 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

tomfakes2 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)