Plenary: What do non-mathematicians need to know about mathematics?

Presented by Professor Sir Timothy Gowers

Recently, a wish has been expressed by the Department of Education, with cross-party support, that everybody should learn mathematics in some form up to the age of 18. That raises interesting questions about what to teach people who would currently give up the subject with great relief after GCSE. I shall argue that more of the same is not a good idea, and suggest an alternative approach that has the potential to reengage people and benefit them in later life.

Timothy Gowers was born in Marlborough in 1963. He was a chorister at King's College, Cambridge, a King's Scholar at Eton and studied mathematics at Cambridge to PhD level. He is now a Royal Society Research Professor at Cambridge. He won a European Mathematical Society Prize in 1996 and a Fields Medal in 1998. He is interested not just in mathematics but also in the dissemination of mathematical ideas. He is the author of Mathematics, A Very Short Introduction and the main editor of The Princeton Companion to Mathematics, for which he was awarded the Euler Book Prize of the Mathematical Association of America. He also has a widely-read mathematical blog.