Matt Parker
Matt Parker, known as the Stand-up Mathematician, can be seen talking about maths on the BBC and the Discovery Channel, in the Guardian and on stages across the UK, at science fairs, festivals and in theatres. Originally a maths teacher from Australia, Matt now lives in Guildford in a house full of almost every retro video-game console ever made. Nothing can ever stand between Matt and computers: he's fluent in binary and could write your name in a sequence of 0s and 1s in seconds. In 2012 he and his Think Maths team made a functioning computer out of domino circuits: it took 10,000 dominoes, 12 people and 6 hours. When he's not working as the Public Engagement in Mathematics Fellow at Queen Mary University of London, doing stand-up or signing fans' calculators at the end of a show, Matt spends his time walking aimlessly in the countryside. His favourite number is currently 2025.
His debut, Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension, was published by Penguin in 2014. In March 2019, its follow-up — Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors — became the first maths book in the UK to be a Sunday Times #1 bestseller. His next book, Love Triangle: How Trigonometry Shapes the World, will be published by Allen Lane in 2024.