Math-Frolic Interview #33
—Roger Penrose
If you don't already know the name Siobhan Roberts it's probably just a matter of a little more time. She is an award-winning Canadian journalist, writing on science matters, and the buzz is rapidly building over her forthcoming book (by mid-July), a biography of John Conway, "Genius At Play: The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway." Some of the promotion for the book calls Conway, "Mick Jagger, Salvador Dali, and Richard Feynman all rolled into one." I'm delighted to have contacted Siobhan prior to the book's release, and have a little of the backstory....
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1) What was your path to becoming a
freelance writer and author, and what, if any, other positions do you currently
hold? (Please include some recounting of how your interest in science/math came
about, and any pertinent academic background.)
Well,
for better or for worse, I don’t have any formal background in math or science.
I started out with a degree in history, followed by a masters in journalism.
Then I worked at the National Post in
Toronto, as an intern and a reporter and features writer. The Post was Conrad Black’s paper, and in
order to avoid doing some of the capital ‘C’ conservative and capital ‘H’ hair-brained
stories my new editors liked to assign, I realized it was always a good idea to
have a stash of my own stories in the works. One such story featured the
Archimedes palimpsest, which was auctioned off at Christie’s and underwent
restoration at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore circa 2000. Working on that piece
brought me back to my passion for math and science — in high school I’d taken
all the math and science courses I could (though oddly enough, math was my
worst subject by far), as well as all the arts course, and then I flipped a
coin and did my BAH. So Archimedes brought about a reunification of the arts
and sciences in my approach to writing. At the Post I started looking for other mathy stories. I Googled “Toronto
geometer” and the search results came up all Coxeter — the great classical
geometer Donald Coxeter, who was then 93. I wrote a feature for the newspaper
on Coxeter, followed by a magazine profile, and then I sold the Coxeter
biography, which was my first book. That’s how I began freelancing, on the
coattails of Donald Coxeter.
2) You've written three biographies, of
engineer Alan Davenport, famed-geometer Coxeter, and now John Conway...
how did you happen to choose those three brilliant figures; is there a common
thread between them?
Inadvertently,
so to speak, one common thread is that all three men went to Cambridge. But it
was Coxeter, of course, who led me to Conway. And Conway pushed me down the
rabbit hole. As the New Yorker writer
Kathryn Schulz noted in her recent piece about falling down rabbit holes: “In its most purely Carrollian sense… to fall down a rabbit
hole means to stumble into a bizarre and disorienting alternate reality.”
Hanging out with Conway for several years certainly was bizarre at times, and
often disorienting, but also huge fun.
...Wow, I didn't realize you were 'hanging out with him for several years' -- what a great stint!
3) Do you have another biographical
subject in mind to do next, or more generally, another topic already lined up
to write a book about?
And a just-for-fun question: if you could go back in
time to meet and talk with (and perhaps write a biography of), any famous
deceased mathematician, who might be your first choice?
I
do have a few ideas percolating, but nothing I’m committing to yet.
As
for someone I’d like to travel back in time and talk to, my first thought is a
trip not too far back to say 'Hello' to John Nash. He was around and about at the
Princeton math department while I was working on Conway’s biography. He’d
saunter through the common room, always looking dapper and genial, I thought. He’d
peer over to see what we were up to squirreled away in an alcove. Conway would
extend his greetings and I’d nod his way. But I never got up the nerve to
introduce myself and ask him a few questions.
4) Over time you've interviewed many
top-notch mathematicians [see HERE], who work in technical areas you may not fully
grasp... is it at all intimidating for you to sit and chat with such
individuals, or does the thrill of speaking with them easily trump any such
intimidation? And more particularly, I'm sure readers would enjoy briefly
hearing what your time spent with John Conway was like?
I
once asked Conway’s good Cambridge friend Mike Guy what it was like to work
with Conway, and he summed it up best: “Crazy!” Though all the craziness proved to be good fodder.
Conway
was extremely generous with this time in helping me grasp the more technical details,
or at least get the general gist of things. Conway loves to talk, he loves to
tell his vast repertoire of tales, and he is a consummate explainer. So he was
the perfect subject. I don’t think I am intimidated by my ignorance in the face
of top-notch expertise so much as I’m shameless. I throw myself on the mercy of
the court. I ask a lot of (ostensibly stupid) questions. And many of the
questions I ask many, many, many times. I circle around things until I’ve got a
semi-coherent intuitive understanding. At least that is how it feels to me. Then
I go back and fact-check, and correct all the nuances that I inevitably got wrong.
5) Who, are your own favorite
science/math authors to read?
Thanks for the heads-up about Gleick's next book, and Dyson is actually an incredibly fascinating figure for a biography himself (I'm aware of one bio already out on him).
6) If someone is not familiar with your
writing are there a few Web-accessible pieces you'd recommend to anyone
wishing to sample your work?
I
recently added an archive of some of my favorite pieces to my website: http://www.siobhanroberts.com/category/articles/
7) To round yourself out a bit, when
you're not researching/writing sciency-stuff, what are some of your other main
interests/hobbies/activities?
I
read, mostly fiction. At the moment I’m on a David Mitchell jag —I started with
his new book, The Bone Clocks, and
then Black Swan Green, and now I’m
wading into Cloud Atlas. I also like
reading cookbooks (Nigel Slater, David Lebovitz, Gabrielle Hamilton). And
because I like cooking and I sit around writing so much, I run, and I do yoga to purge the angst.
8) Will end with a freebie for you
;-)... What would you like readers to know about your upcoming Conway
biography, that you haven't already said above? And will you be doing a book
tour?
Indeed,
there shall be a book tour! In two parts. For the summer I’ll be on the math
train, doing the conference circuit:
Bridges in Baltimore, MoMATH MOVES in NYC, and MathFest in Washington,
D.C., and then Conway and I are topping it off with a joint talk at NYC Google
headquarters, where I’ll interview him on the subject of why he hates the Game of Life (it’s a love/hate thing, depending on his mood).
In the fall, when school’s back in session, I’ll launch the book officially at Ben McNally Books in Toronto, followed by Princeton (details TBA), as well as an alumni panel talk with Gary Giddins at the Leon Levy Center for Biography, in October back in New York City. And I’m hoping to make it to Michele Emmer’s Mathematics & Culture conference next March in Venice. Since it took more than a lustrum (to borrow one of Conway’s favorite words) to write Genius At Play, I figure the “book tour” can drag on for a while.
In the fall, when school’s back in session, I’ll launch the book officially at Ben McNally Books in Toronto, followed by Princeton (details TBA), as well as an alumni panel talk with Gary Giddins at the Leon Levy Center for Biography, in October back in New York City. And I’m hoping to make it to Michele Emmer’s Mathematics & Culture conference next March in Venice. Since it took more than a lustrum (to borrow one of Conway’s favorite words) to write Genius At Play, I figure the “book tour” can drag on for a while.
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I suspect "Genius At Play" will be one of the most heralded/covered math-related books of the entire year -- you've picked a topic that can't miss! Thanks for giving us a little insight into it, Siobhan, and have a super book tour.
[My review of the book now up HERE.]
[My review of the book now up HERE.]
American Scientist Magazine did a prior interview with Siobhan awhile back focused more around her work on Donald Coxeter:
http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/siobhan-roberts
Of course, you can pre-order on Amazon, if you don't want to wait for it in your local bookstore:
http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/siobhan-roberts
Of course, you can pre-order on Amazon, if you don't want to wait for it in your local bookstore:
