Simon Singh in a Matrix of Fabulous Discoveries

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"Just as Simon Singh and billions of fellow human beings are by virtue of the small-world phenomenon positioned within 6 or fewer degrees of each other ... musicians, writers, journalists, filmmakers, photographers, quiltmakers, multimedia artists et al in a system of interlinked recommendations are likewise positioned — by the identical phenomenon — within a handful of transitable steps of each other — and by extrapolation — within discoverable, accessible reach of just about everybody everywhere here on planet earth. Algorithms not necessary."
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CURATIONS & PROVENANCE

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ARTIST/CREATOR/EDUCATOR

Name: Simon Singh
City/Place: London
Country: United Kingdom

Life & Work

Bio: My family have been farmers for generations in Punjab, India. In 1938, my grandfather left his village of Thakarki and settled in Somerset in the southwest of England, and in 1950 my parents emigrated to Taunton. A few years later they moved to Wellington, and that is where I was born.

Although I did not know it at the time, Somerset is a fertile ground for budding scientists. Just 5 miles from where I was born is the town of Milverton, the birthplace of Thomas Young, the polymath who made breakthroughs in a wide range of subjects. Most important of all, he advocated the wave theory of light. He studied at Emmanuel College Cambridge, and in due I course I attended the same college, but I failed to make any significant contributions to the foundations of physics.

My mum always emphasised the importance of education, my dad got me interested in how things work and my big sister made sure I did my homework. It was not long before I was doing well at St John’s Primary School and at the age of nine I declared that I wanted to be a nuclear physicist. Bizarrely, I actually remember this moment with clarity.

Although I considered being a glam rocker and a footballer, I stuck to my scientific ambitions, largely inspired by TV boffins. I have always loved watching TV, and the early 1970s was great for scientists on the box. This was post-Apollo era, so Patrick Moore and James Burke had become prime time TV stars. Alongside them, Carl Sagan, Magnus Pyke and Heinz Wolff became my role models.

I think that it is great to have some idea of what you want to do with your life. I was lucky that I realised that my future lay in science, so I knew where to concentrate my efforts. I studied A levels in mathematics, physics and chemistry, and thanks to my great teachers I managed to get the grades I needed to study physics at Imperial College, part of the University of London. I had originally applied to Cambridge University, but they rejected me. In hindsight, it was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Before starting my physics degree at Imperial College, London, I spent a year at GEC Hirst Research Centre, Wembley, working on gallium arsenide monolithic microwave integrated circuits. GEC were sponsoring me during my studies. It was an interesting year and I grew up a bit, but the main lesson I learned was that my future did not rest in industrial research and development.

Instead, I knuckled down, studied hard and aimed for a career in academia. However, while working for my degree, I did a few things that in hindsight helped to set me on the course that I am currently on. My first adventures in writing involved occasional articles for student newspapers and helping to edit a couple of newsletters, namely Schrodinger’s Cat for the physics department and Otto for my hall of residence. I did not write for college newspapers with the intention of being a journalist, but it turned out to be my stepping stone to journalism when my career path took a dog leg.

It is often strange how an experience at one point in your life unintentionally turns out to be exactly what you need a few years down the line. Another example of this occurred after my second year of studying physics. I spent the summer at the University of Delaware on the American East Coast, as part of a student exchange programme. This was one my happiest summers and it would not have happened if I had not previously worked at GEC. My year at GEC gave me the perfect qualification for the position at Delaware, because they both involved gallium arsenide. However, I had not gone to GEC in order to get a job in Delaware.

Between leaving Imperial College and starting my PhD, I spent a couple of months teaching at Doon School in Dehra Dun, one of the best schools in India. Once again, this is an illustration of how an experience paid off in an unexpected way. I taught in order to travel and live in India for a while, but the teaching experience that I picked up would become invaluable when I became a journalist, as I learned how to explain scientific concepts in a vivid and clear way.

My PhD in experimental particle physics was based at Cambridge University, but I spent most of my three years working at the European Centre for Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva. I worked as part of the UA2 collaboration, which had previously won the Nobel Prize for discovering the W and Z bosons. It was a wonderful three years.

CERN has a network of so-called accelerators. These accelerators smash particles together, often matter and antimatter travelling almost at the speed of light. In the case of my experiment, we were colliding protons and antiprotons, in the hope that the intense energy of the impact would create other particles.

Theory suggests that there is a particle called the top quark, and we hoped that the collisions would create some of these hitherto unseen particles. We ran our experiment for a couple of years, smashing billions of particles in the accelerator, but there was no sign of the top quark. Nevertheless, by its absence, I could deduce something about the top quark, so I was still able to complete my thesis.

The top quark was eventually discovered at America’s Fermi Laboratory in the early 1990s, just a couple years after I finished my PhD. It turned out that the top quark was surprisingly massive, and our accelerator at CERN had simply not been powerful enough.

Particle physics was great fun. My three years at Cambridge and CERN were challenging and stimulating. However, I could see that there were people around me who were on a different planet when it came to understanding and researching physics, and it would be they who would go on to make their names as pioneers. As for me, it was time to change career. I had always enjoyed talking about and explaining science, so I took the decision to move towards a career in journalism and science communication. In particular, I have always loved television and felt that this was the most influential medium, so I started applying for a job at the BBC.

In 1990 I joined the BBC’s Science Department, where I was a producer and director in programmes such as Tomorrow’s World and Horizon. In 1996 I directed Fermat’s Last Theorem, a BAFTA award winning documentary about the world’s most notorious mathematical problem. The documentary was also aired in America as part of the NOVA series. The Proof, as it was re-titled, was nominated for an Emmy.

The story of this notorious mathematical problem was also the subject of my first book, imaginatively entitled Fermat’s Last Theorem. This was the first book about mathematics to become a No.1 bestseller in the UK. In America the book was called “Fermat’s Enigma”.

In 1997 I began working on my second book, The Code Book, a history of codes and codebreaking. As well as explaining the science of codes and describing the impact of codebreaking on history, the book also shows that cryptography is more important today than ever before. After all, we live in the Information Age, and one of the best ways to protect information is to encrypt it.

The Code Book has resulted in a return to television for me. I presented The Science of Secrecy, a 5-part series for Channel 4. The stories in the series range from the cipher that sealed the fate of Mary Queen of Scots to the coded Zimmermann Telegram that changed the course of the First World War. Other programmes discuss how two great nineteenth century geniuses raced to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs and how modern encryption can guarantee privacy on the Internet.

My other books include “Big Bang” and “Trick or Treatment?“. After publishing an article about chiropractic in April 2008, I was sued by the British Chiropractic Association in a libel case that last two years, which I eventually won. Along the way, I became closely involved with the Libel Reform Campaign, and I continue to lobby for a fairer libel law.

My latest book (2013) is The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets, which explores the vast amount of mathematics smuggled into the world’s most successful sitcom by its highly numerate writing team.

As well as solo lectures, which I enjoy, I have taken part in several bigger shows, including Theatre of Science with Professor Richard Wiseman, Nine Lessons… with Robin Ince and the 2011 Uncaged Monkey Tour with Brian Cox, Ben Goldacre and Robin Ince.

The skeptic movement has taken up more of my time in recent years, and I have been delighted to talk at various Skeptics in the Pub events, take part in James Randi’s international TAM events and support efforts such at the 10:23 homeopathic overdose challenge.

I have also helped to start education projects. UAS encourages university science departments to work more closely with schools, while the Enigma project conducts maths/cryptography workshops in schools with a genuine Enigma cipher machine.

CASE, Sense About Science and the Science Media Centre are three excellent organizations, and I have been working closely with all of them over the last few years. In particular, Sense About Science has been at the forefront of the Libel Reform Campaign.