Biographical Sketch

Ian Stewart was born in 1945, educated at Cambridge (MA) and Warwick (PhD), and has four honorary doctorates (Open University, Westminster, Louvain, and Kingston). He is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Warwick University, where he divides his time equally between research into nonlinear dynamics and furthering public awareness of mathematics. His current research interests focus on pattern formation and the dynamics of networks. He has held visiting positions in Germany, New Zealand, and the USA.

He is best known for his popular science writing on mathematical themes.  In 1995 he was awarded the Royal Society’s Faraday Medal for furthering the public understanding of science. His book Nature’s Numbers was shortlisted for the 1996 Rhone-Poulenc Prize for Science Books, and Why Beauty is Truth was shortlisted for the  2008 Royal Society Prize for Science Books.

He delivered the 1997 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on BBC television and repeated them in Japan in 1998. His awards include the Royal Society’s Faraday Medal (1995), the IMA Gold Medal (2000), the AAAS Public Understanding of Science and Technology Award (2001), and the LMS/IMA Zeeman Medal (2008). Jointly with M. Golubitsky he won the 2001 Balaguer Prize. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2001.

He has published over 80 books including Does God Play Dice?, Nature’s Numbers, The Collapse of Chaos, Figments of Reality, Life’s Other Secret, Flatterland, What Shape is a Snowflake?, Letters to a Young Mathematician, Taming the Infinite, and Why Beauty is Truth. He has also written two science fiction novels, Wheelers and Heaven, with Jack Cohen. The Italian translation of Letters to a Young Mathematician won the 2006 Peano Prize, and The Symmetry Perspective won the 2001 Balaguer Prize. Professor Stewart’s Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities reached number 6 on Amazon UK in 2009, and was followed by Professor Stewart’s Hoard of Mathematical Treasures. Recent books include Cows in the Maze, Mathematics of Life, and Seventeen Equations That Changed the World, which reached number 7 on Amazon UK in 2012. He is coauthor of the UK bestselling series The Science of Discworld I, II, and III with Terry Pratchett and Jack Cohen. He has also written two science fiction novels with Jack Cohen: Wheelers and Heaven.

He has contributed to a wide range of newspapers and magazines in the UK, Europe, and the USA, including New Scientist and Scientific American. He writes puzzle columns for Prospect and the Sunday Telegraph, and is a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph website. He has been a mathematics consultant for New Scientist and Encyclopaedia Britannica. For ten years he wrote the monthly ‘Mathematical Recreations’ column of Scientific American. He makes frequent radio and television appearances.

He is an active research mathematician with over 180 papers published or in press, and his present field is the effects of symmetry on dynamics, with applications to pattern formation and chaos theory in areas including animal locomotion, fluid dynamics, mathematical biology, chemical reactions, electronic circuits, computer vision, quality control of wire, and intelligent control of spring coiling machines.   He takes a particular interest in problems that lie in the gaps between pure and applied mathematics. He is the author of several research texts includingThe Symmetry Perspective (with Martin Golubitsky), Singularities and Groups in Bifurcation Theory (with Martin Golubitsky and David Schaeffer) and Catastrophe Theory and Its Applications (with Tim Poston).