The point is with good maths skills you have just wonderful opportunities and if you don't have good maths skills, there are just so many things that you won't be able to do.

Theory is needed to tell you where to look.

Mathematics is a place where you can do things which you can't do in the real world.

I think science is a foreign land for many people, so I think of my role as an ambassador's job.

Its my belief that you can take everyone down a logical path if you take them slowly enough, and the trouble is that mathematical brains can get scrambled a little bit on the way. You get a bad teacher, it messes you up for the rest of the journey.

Mathematics has beauty and romance. It's not a boring place to be, the mathematical world. It's an extraordinary place; it's worth spending time there.

Primes are the atoms of the arithmetic - the hydrogen and oxygen of the world of numbers