Being mobbed in Tesco isn’t usually an occupational hazard for a mathematician. But for Dr Tom Crawford it’s an increasingly frequent occurrence.
“There was a student, literally yesterday,” he admits. “I was doing my shopping and he came up to me, shaking with nerves and said ‘I watched all your videos when I was 16, and now I’m here doing maths at Oxford’.”
After studying maths at Oxford as an undergraduate himself, Tom spent a summer as a visiting researcher at UCLA, before completing a PhD in Mathematical Modelling at Cambridge (he’s an alumnus of Queens’). An internship with the Naked Scientists formed his introduction to science communication. He now combines lectureships at both Oxford and Cambridge with creating videos for his 212,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel, Tom Rocks Maths, where his Tiggerish enthusiasm for advanced numeracy has proved an irresistible combination.
“You often ask yourself why do people watch your videos instead of someone else’s, because it’s all the same maths,” he ponders. “What I’ve discovered talking to undergrads – they’ve been very good with feedback over the years – is that I just get far too excited talking about maths. And then people watch me getting super-excited and think ‘oh, well if Tom’s getting that excited then what am I missing out on? Clearly this is something that I should be excited about too.’”
The prolonged intensive focus of a PhD, while rewarding, demonstrated that research might not prove the best fit for Tom’s academic career.
“Thinking about the same thing for four years is not my first-choice thing. I think my brain is too much ‘new, shiny things’! That’s possibly why I ended up doing YouTube videos, where each week I’m like ‘ok, cool, what maths do I want to think about this week.’”
Teaching, however, has always been part of the mix and, for the past 18 months, Tom’s communication career has been formally embedded in his Oxford employment contract, with a new title of Public Engagement Lead.
“Now it’s actually part of my job, which is awesome.”
A year-long contract with the Naked Scientists followed the initial internship, and honed Tom’s instinctive ability to communicate his own passion for his subject. But a hankering to include a visual element to his storytelling led him to creating videos for YouTube, which he continued after the role came to an end.
“I realised I really enjoyed it, and the audience enjoyed it. So when the year’s funding finished I thought ‘I want to keep doing the YouTube stuff, but I also need a real job that’s going to pay me.’”
A lectureship at Oxford and, more recently, at Cambridge filled this gap, while his audiences grew. Despite the evidence of fans in Tesco, Tom has never thought of his communication of maths as a public service, but is delighted by the accolade.
“When people mention this I always think ‘that’s awesome’, but I don’t think I ever think of it in that way myself. It’s something that I enjoy, and it seems to help people, and it’s amazing when people write to me or stop me in the supermarket.”
At Darwin, he’ll be returning to the focus of his PhD, using the series theme of Codes to explore mathematical modelling.
“What I’m going to focus on is the big picture of some of these models – how did we come up with them, how do they work, what is the code that we’ve discovered or the rules that are describing these situations. I think it’s just having an idea that these things exist; having an idea of the variety and breadth of the things that we’ve been able to decode, as it were, about the universe in different ways, and having an appreciation for how valuable and helpful and insightful mathematical models can be.”
The Darwin lectures attract a diverse audience, from subject specialists to those starting from first principles. But that’s a balancing act that Tom’s increasingly prolific speaking career has given him plenty of practice at.
“It’s a fun challenge I think. For these kinds of events I see my purpose as to entertain and educate. Just framing it in a way that can be intellectually stimulating to people who know the theory, but at the same time making sure that those who are completely new to it are able to follow the story and the thread and the narrative of what I’m trying to talk about.”
Join us for Tom’s lecture, Using Maths to Decode the Universe, at 5.30pm on Friday 7th February.
