Professor Hannah Fry Wins the Leelavati Prize for Mathematics Outreach
Hannah Fry Wins the Leelavati Prize in 2026 for Mathematics Outreach
I am honored to receive the Leelavati Prize for my work in making mathematics accessible to everyone. This award recognizes the vital role of public engagement in demystifying complex concepts and inspiring the next generation of problem-solvers. My journey as the Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics at Cambridge continues to focus on bridging the gap between academic research and everyday life.
Mathematics is not just a subject for specialists; it is a universal language that helps us understand the world around us and solve the challenges we face together.
- kitd
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
- ErrantX
Congrats Hannah. I'll pile on with my own anecdote; I've run an internal conference at work for several years and we always book an external speaker.
She remains my (close) second favourite[1], with a choose your own adventure talk about algorithms. It was genuinely great, and warm, and thoughtful (a lot of it was about the risks of algorithms, which is very relevant for us).
This was... 2021 so mid COVID (yep it was remote) and so just before she became really big. We've worked with a lot of external speakers since, many of them very good or very slick, but she was the only one that was clearly both brilliant at her topic(s) and also an exceptional communicator.
[1] For the record my favourite is Clifford Agius who is some guy I saw at a local conference who in his spare time from being a commercial pilot builds fully robotic arms for kids - he even lets them give the finger. Great guy and refused to charge us more than a few hundred quid.
- vgivanovic
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!
- tomfakes
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)
- arlattimore
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.