A Profile of Math Popularizer Robin Wilson

October 16, 2008

The publication this year of Lewis Carroll in Numberland: His Fantastical Mathematical Logical Life has brought attention not only to its subject, mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (born in 1832), but also to its author. He's Robin J. Wilson (born in 1943), professor of geometry at Gresham College and professor of pure mathematics at the Open University (OU), and a fellow of Keble College, Oxford. Robin Wilson is the son of Harold Wilson, who was a British prime minister.

Having eschewed politics, Wilson has worked at OU for 36 years. He—along with Marcus du Sautoy—has been in the forefront of efforts to popularize mathematics since 1998, the centenary of Carroll's death.

Wilson's interest in Dodgson dates back to that time. "Over the years," Wilson told The Gaurdian, "I worked the material into a one-hour stage show which has been performed regularly at Keble and maths conventions around the world and, when Penguin asked me to do the book, I developed my ideas still further."

Such ideas are part of an OU introductory mathematics course designed by Wilson, which will complement Marcus du Sautoy's BBC4 series on the history of mathematics later this year. Wilson hopes the combination will help get a new generation interested in mathematics.

Carroll isn't Wilson's only interest. He has written or edited about 30 books so far, on topics ranging from the four-color map problem to Sudoku puzzles. "The fewest given numbers from which a Sudoku puzzle can be solved is believed to be 17," he noted, "though no one has been able to prove that definitively."

Wilson's book on solving Sudoku puzzles has sold 200,000 copies worldwide. Perhaps his book on mathematics and Lewis Carroll will do as well.
 
Source: Guardian, Oct. 7, 2008.