Biographical Sketch

Ian Stewart was born in 1945, educated at Cambridge (MA) and Warwick(PhD). He has honorary doctorates from Westminster, Louvain, Kingston, and the Open University. He is an Emeritus Professor and Digital Media Fellow in the Mathematics Department at Warwick University, with special responsibility for public awareness of mathematics and science. He has held visiting positions in Germany, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and the USA.
        He is best known for his popular science writing on mathematical themes.  In 1995 he was awarded the Royal Society's Michael 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. He delivered the 1997 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on BBC television and repeated them for NHK in Japan in 1998. He is winner of the 1999 Communications Award of the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics, and he was awarded the 2000 Gold Medal of the UK's Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications. His joint book The Science of Discworld was nominated for a Hugo award at the 2000 World science fiction convention. Jointly with M. Golubitsky he won the 2001 Balaguer Prize. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2001, and won the Public Understanding of Science and Technology Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2002. He won the Premio Peano for the Italian translation of Letters to a Young Mathematician, and Why Beauty is Truth was shortlisted for the 2007 Royal Society Science Book Prize. In 2008 he was awarded the Zeeman Medal of the London Mathematical Society and the Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications, for popularising mathematics. The Italian translation of Why Beauty is Truth was shortlisted for the 2009 Galileo Prize.
        He has published more than 80 books including From Here to Infinity; Nature's Numbers; The Collapse of Chaos; Fearful Symmetry; Does God Play Dice? ; The Problems of Mathematics; Game, Set & Math; Another Fine Math You've Got Me Into. Earlier books include three mathematical comic books published in French: Oh! Catastrophe!, Les Fractals, and Ah! Les Beaux Groupes. Recent popular science books include Why Beauty is Truth, Letters to a Young Mathematician, The Mayor of Uglyville’s Dilemma, Figments of Reality, The Magical Maze, Life’s Other Secret, the UK bestselling series The Science of Discworld I, II, and III  (with Terry Pratchett and Jack Cohen), the US bestseller Flatterland, What Shape is a Snowflake?, The Annotated Flatland, What Does a Martian Look Like? (with Cohen), Math Hysteria,  How to Cut a Cake, and the bestselling Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities. A sequel, Professor Stewart's Hoard of Mathematical Treasures, has recently been published. He has also written the science fiction novels Wheelers and Heaven (with Jack Cohen).
        He has contributed to a wide range of newspapers and magazines in the UK, Europe, and the USA, including New Scientist, Scientific American, and Discover.   He was the mathematics consultant for New Scientist until 2009, and has been a consultant for Encyclopaedia Britannica.  For ten years he wrote the monthly 'Mathematical Recreations' column of Scientific American.
        He has appeared on numerous radio programmes including Desert Island Discs, The Brains Trust, The Litmus Test, The Afternoon Shift, Science Now, Start The Week, Loose Ends, Night Waves, The Brains Trust, and In Our Time. In addition to the Christmas Lectures, he has appeared on TV in the Equinox programmes 'Chaos’, 'Antichaos', and 'Great Little Numbers', The Late Show, Reality on the Rocks, Esther, The Bride of Frankenstein, Sex and the Scientists, Blue Peter, Tomorrow's World, The Numbers Game, Six Experiments that Changed the World, and Country Tracks. He presented How Will It All End? for Channel Five.
        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 has held research grants to a total value of over £1,250,000   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).