We now have carte blanche to sit on the sofa watching TV, thanks to one of Britain's leading science writers.
Simon Singh will be in Oxford next week to talk about his new book, The Simpsons And Their Mathematical Secrets.
A former Cern physicist, bestselling author, Singh holds a PhD from Cambridge in particle physics. Yet he prepared for his latest book by watching numerous episodes of the TV children’s cartoon The Simpsons.
We all know that Lisa Simpson is a mathematical genius, but he also discovered Homer referring to Fermat’s last theorem, the most notorious equation in the history of mathematics — about which, coincidentally, Singh has also written a book. The writers of The Simpsons boast degrees in mathematics and some of them have authored serious mathematical research papers, so they sneak mathematical references into the show.
* Singh will be talking at Oxford University’s Mathematical Institute at the Radcliffe Observatory site in Woodstock Road on October 15. As he says: “Be there or be a regular quadrilateral.”
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