Hannah Fry Wins the Leelavati Prize in 2026 for Mathematics Outreach

Posted by agnishom 5 hours ago

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Comment by kitd 1 hour ago

Well deserved.

Her most memorable program for me was her 2018 program "Contagion" which modelled a virus outbreak among volunteers in the town of Haslemere, UK, using an app measuring Bluetooth proximity.

Guess which town contained the UK's Covid patient zero a year later!

Edit: found it here https://youtu.be/yISdMLbO0Wc?is=T-Tq9LwzLgbusuoe

Comment by pmg101 42 minutes ago

And didn't the NHS app use Bluetooth proximity to alert you if you'd been in contact with a COVID case early in the pandemic? A nice case of life imitating art.

Comment by kitd 25 minutes ago

Yeah, just watching the first few minutes of the program, it's astonishing how prophetic it was.

Comment by vgivanovic 2 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!

Comment by chews 2 minutes ago

Her tiktok channel is one of my favorites. Her ability to tell a maths story in such a clever way has always given me pause to watch. Congratulations to such a gifted communicator!

Comment by arlattimore 1 hour ago

I really love Hannah, great communicator and keeps it interesting. If you're interested, I'd also recommend Brian Cox as a similarly fantastic representative for maths & science.

Comment by tomfakes 2 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)

Comment by banditelol 30 minutes ago

Yesssss

The video version is also a lot of fun to watch while doing dishes

Comment by cush 1 hour ago

It’s my favorite podcast right now!

Comment by nhinck3 1 hour ago

It's also on youtube, so you can watch if you are so inclined.

Comment by bambax 12 minutes ago

She's really nice, fun and engaging. She has a recent video about AI agents selling mugshots that's well made and clear.

Comment by vaylian 3 hours ago

Well deserved. She is an excellent science communicator.

Comment by seanhunter 2 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.

Comment by hnlmorg 7 minutes ago

I met her when she gave a lecture in London about algorithms as part of a promotional tour for the book.

We chatted about Ada Lovelace (a topic she also did a documentary about for the BBC) and she was exactly the same in person as her personality is on the TV / Radio / Podcasts.

That was definitely a highlight of that year for me.

Comment by skybrian 2 hours ago

Any online writing that you'd recommend?

Comment by rvz 2 hours ago

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

Comment by dofm 2 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 charming little 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

Comment by sc970 1 hour ago

Look forward to seeing her on Celebrity Traitors UK later this year.

Comment by rwmj 1 hour ago

It's quite an interesting line-up: https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2026/the-celebrity-traitor...

Comment by hnlmorg 5 minutes ago

I normally can’t stand the show but the previous celebrity one was superb! This line up looks great too.