Hannah Fry

Hannah Fry (born February 1984[1]) is a mathematician, author, lecturer, radio and television presenter, podcaster and public speaker. She studies the patterns of human behaviour, such as interpersonal relationships and dating, and how mathematics can apply to them.[2][3] Fry delivered the 2019 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures.

Hannah Fry
Fry in 2017
BornFebruary 1984 (age 36–37)[1]
Harlow, England
Alma materUniversity College London (UCL)
OccupationMathematician, author, lecturer, radio and television presenter, podcaster and public speaker
Children2
Websitewww.hannahfry.co.uk

Early life and education

Fry is of Irish descent.[4] She attended Presdales School in Ware, Hertfordshire, England,[5] before studying mathematics at University College London (UCL).[6] In 2011, she was awarded a PhD in fluid dynamics by UCL.[7]

Career

Academia

Fry was appointed as a lecturer at University College London in 2012. As of 2019 she is a senior lecturer at the university's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis.[8]

At the Data of Tomorrow conference, 2017

Radio, podcasts, and television

Fry regularly appears on BBC Radio 4 in the UK, including in Computing Britain (2015, 12 episodes)[9] and The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry (with Adam Rutherford), which aired its 17th series in 2020.[10]

She has presented several BBC television programmes. In 2015, Fry presented a BBC Four film biography of Ada Lovelace.[11] In 2016, she co-presented Trainspotting Live with Peter Snow, a three-part series about trains and trainspotting, for the same channel.[12] In the BBC Two series City in the Sky Fry studied the logistics of aviation.[13] She also hosted The Joy of Data on BBC Four, which examines the history and human impact of data.[14] A further credit for 2016 was her co-hosting an episode of the BBC Two Horizon series with Dr Xand van Tulleken, titled "How to Find Love Online".[15] In 2017, Fry presented an episode of Horizon titled "10 Things You Need to Know About the Future".[16]

In 2018, she presented Contagion! The BBC Four Pandemic, about the possible impact of a flu pandemic,[17] and Magic Numbers, also on BBC Four, a three-part series which explored mathematical concepts.[18] She hosted a one-off 90-minute special of the BBC science programme Tomorrow's World alongside four presenters from the show's original run: Maggie Philbin, Howard Stableford, Judith Hann and Peter Snow.[19]

In 2019, Fry presented a BBC Four programme titled A Day in the Life of Earth which explored how Earth changes in a single day and how these daily changes are essential to human existence.[20] Fry also co-presented a Horizon episode titled "The Honest Supermarket", which covered a range of issues, including expiration dates and their impact on food waste, microplastics in the human food supply and the impact food consumption has on the environment.[21] She presented the 2019 edition of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, entitled "Secrets and lies", on the hidden numbers, rules and patterns that control daily lives;[22] the three lectures were broadcast on BBC Four.[23]

In 2020, Fry co-presented both The Great British Intelligence Test and Coronavirus Special – Part 2 with Michael Mosley on BBC Two.[24][25] She has presented further programmes for the BBC explaining the mathematics behind COVID-19 and related pandemics.[26]

TED and YouTube

On 30 March 2014, Fry gave a TED talk at TEDxBinghamtonUniversity[27] titled "The Mathematics of Love", which as of August 2020 has attracted over 5.2 million views.[28] Following the TED talk, she published a book on the topic – The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation – in which she applies statistical and data-scientific models to dating, sex and marriage.[29]

Fry has appeared in several videos for a YouTube mathematics channel, Numberphile, run by Brady Haran.[30] She has also made an appearance on his podcast: The Numberphile Podcast.[31]

Writing

Fry has written three books. The first, The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation (2015), includes the "37% rule", a form of the secretary problem according to which roughly the first third of any potential partners should be rejected. The second, The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus (2016, co-authored with fellow mathematician Thomas Oléron Evans), discusses various Christmas-related topics and how mathematics can be involved in them, including a fair Secret Santa, decoration of Christmas trees, winning at Monopoly, and comparing the vocabulary of the Queen's Christmas message to Snoop Dogg.[6] Her third book is Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms (2018), reprinted the same year as Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine, which looks at the impact of algorithms that affect lives.[32]

Publications
  • The Mathematics of Love (2015), ISBN 978-1471141805
  • The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus (2017), ISBN 978-1784162740
  • Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine (2019), ISBN 978-1784163068

Awards and honours

In 2013, Fry won the UCL Provost's Public Engager of the Year award.[33] The award recognises the work that UCL's staff and students are doing to open up the university. Fry was nominated for her broad portfolio of public engagement activities.[33]

In 2018, the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and the London Mathematical Society announced that Fry had won that year's Christopher Zeeman Medal "for her contributions to the public understanding of the mathematical sciences".[34]

In 2020, Fry won the Asimov Prize, a literary-scientific award organised by the Italian graduate school Gran Sasso Science Institute, for her book Hello World.[35]

Personal life

Fry is married; she and her husband have two daughters.[36][37]

References
  1. Mesure, Susie (27 November 2019). "Hannah Fry, the woman making maths cool". The Times. Retrieved 3 December 2019.
  2. Hannah Fry Official website
  3. Is life really that complex?, a TED talk
  4. "My Story/Dr Hannah Fry". Elle. 1 January 2017. Retrieved 18 December 2018.
  5. "Mathematics Department Speaker – Dr Hannah Fry". www.presdales.herts.sch.uk. Presdales School & Sixth Form. Archived from the original on 5 September 2017. Retrieved 18 December 2016.
  6. "In conversation with Hannah Fry". Chalkdust Magazine. University College London. 24 March 2015.
  7. Fry, Hannah M. (2011). A study of droplet deformation. ucl.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University College London. OCLC 829959172. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.565231.
  8. "Dr Hannah Fry". The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. UCL. 29 December 2016. Retrieved 25 December 2019.
  9. "Computing Britain". BBC. Retrieved 10 July 2016.
  10. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07dx75g
  11. "Calculating Ada: The Countess of computing". BBC. 17 September 2015. Retrieved 15 September 2015.
  12. "Meet the stars of new TV show 'Trainspotting Live'". The Daily Telegraph. 11 July 2016. Retrieved 11 July 2016.
  13. "City in the Sky". BBC. Retrieved 10 July 2016.
  14. "The Joy of Data". BBC Four. Retrieved 29 July 2018.
  15. "How to Find Love Online, 2016, Horizon". BBC Two. Retrieved 29 July 2018.
  16. "10 Things You Need to Know About the Future". BBC. 19 June 2017. Retrieved 20 June 2017.
  17. "Contagion! The BBC Four Pandemic". BBC. 22 March 2018. Retrieved 22 March 2018.
  18. "BBC Four – Magic Numbers: Hannah Fry's Mysterious World of Maths". BBC. Retrieved 25 December 2019.
  19. Conlan, Tara (3 November 2018). "BBC to reboot Tomorrow's World for one-off live special". The Guardian.
  20. "BBC Four – A Day in the Life of Earth". BBC. Retrieved 10 June 2019.
  21. "BBC Two – Horizon, 2019, The Honest Supermarket: What's Really in Our Food?". BBC. Retrieved 30 September 2019.
  22. "Christmas Lectures 2019: Secrets and lies". Royal Institution. Retrieved 27 December 2019.
  23. "Royal Institution Christmas Lectures". BBC Four. Retrieved 27 December 2019.
  24. "Horizon, 2020, The Great British Intelligence Test". BBC Two. Retrieved 8 May 2020.
  25. "Horizon, 2020, Coronavirus Special – Part 2". BBC Two. Retrieved 6 August 2020.
  26. "Can maths help us to beat the coronavirus?". BBC World Service. 6 March 2020. Retrieved 14 September 2020.
  27. "TEDx 2014 at Binghamton University". binghamton.edu. Retrieved 29 July 2018.
  28. Fry, Hannah. "The mathematics of love". ted.com. Retrieved 25 April 2020.
  29. Buchan, Kit (19 June 2016). "Hannah Fry: 'There's a mathematical angle to almost anything'". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 July 2016.
  30. "The Team". Numberphile. Retrieved 4 October 2018.
  31. "Delicious Problems – with Hannah Fry". Numberphile.
  32. "Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms". American Physics Society. Retrieved 13 September 2020.
  33. "Dr Hannah Fry wins Provost's Public Engager of the Year award". The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. UCL. 1 February 2013. Retrieved 10 June 2019.
  34. "Hannah Fry is awarded 2018 Christopher Zeeman Medal", IMA, accessed 9 September 2018
  35. "Quinta edizione - premio Asimov" (in Italian). Retrieved 27 December 2020.
  36. Kelly, Guy (13 October 2020). "Mathematician Hannah Fry on Covid briefings: 'By focusing on numbers we can lose sight of people'". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 31 October 2020.
  37. Mesure, Susie (27 November 2019). "Hannah Fry, the woman making maths cool". ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 31 October 2020.
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