communication department

Volume XIX Number 9

Simon Singh Named Honorary Fellow for 2007

STC is pleased to announce that Simon Singh, author, journalist, and television producer, is the Society’s honorary fellow for 2007. Singh will accept his award and address attendees at STC’s 54th Annual Conference, May 13–16, 2007, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Singh is the author of three books: Fermat’s Last Theorem (the first book about mathematics to become a number-one bestseller in the United Kingdom—the American version is called Fermat’s Enigma), The Code Book, and Big Bang. He joined the BBC’s science department in 1990 and produced and directed programs including Tomorrow’s World, Horizon, and Fermat’s Last Theorem, which won a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) award. Fermat’s Last Theorem also aired on NOVA in America (retitled as The Proof) and was nominated for an Emmy. Singh has also presented The Science of Secrecy, a five-part television series made for England’s Channel 4 television station. He continues to present radio and television programs and is involved in projects that build links between universities and schools.

Singh developed the Enigma Schools Project, which has since been taken over by the Millennium Mathematics Project (MMP). This educational program brings a World War II Enigma machine (a portable cipher machine used to encrypt and decrypt secret messages) to schools and delivers code-breaking workshops designed to engage students ages eight to eighteen in mathematics. With a PhD in particle physics from the University of Cambridge, he has also worked as a physicist in England and taught at schools in South Africa and India. Singh is on the board of the Science Media Centre and is a trustee of the National Museum of Science and Industry and the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA). He is also an ambassador for ActionAid, an international development agency whose aim is to fight poverty worldwide.

According to Sheila Jones, manager of STC’s Honorary Fellow Nominating Committee, the committee chose Singh because he is “articulate, funny, and has wide-ranging interests.” Jones said that Singh is known for his “witty and engaging” perspective on mathematics and the sciences; as a Daily Telegraph review of the book Big Bang noted, “He . . . gives science a deeply humanistic, humorous, down-to-earth spin.” The Guardian praised Singh’s “brazen use of the actual science” in Big Bang: “First, it affords a respect to the reader so often missing from ‘wow, isn't science cool?’ books and shows exactly what the scientists of yesteryear were dealing with when they came up with their ideas. Second, it shows science for what it is: ideas, arguments and, ultimately, the consensus of the establishment.”

These characteristics were also evident in Singh’s August 2006 Daily Telegraph article on Grigory Perelman, the reclusive Russian mathematician who is not interested in receiving rewards for his work, despite the fact that many scholars believe he has solved the notoriously complex Poincaré conjecture. Singh writes, “Realistically, mathematicians are never going to be very glamorous, and moreover it could be that Perelman is exactly what mathematics needs in order to promote itself. Perversely, however, I believe that this hairy Russian hermit could be the poster boy who helps create a new generation of mathematical geniuses.”

The Society bestows honorary fellowships on nonmembers who have made exceptional contributions to the field of technical communication. Honorary fellowships include lifetime membership in STC. Please join us in welcoming Simon Singh to STC.