Her work has included studies of patterns of human behaviour, such as interpersonal relationships and dating, and how mathematics can apply to them,[8][9] the mathematics behind pandemics and an attempt to get the population in general to understand mathematics better. Fry gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 2019 and has presented several television and radio programmes for the BBC, including The Secret Genius of Modern Life.[10]
Early life and education
Hannah M. Fry[11][1] was born in Harlow, Essex, England, on 21 February 1984.[12] She is of English and Irish heritage: her father is an English factory worker, and her stay-at-home mother is from Ireland.[13][14] One summer, when she was about 11, her mother made her solve one page of problems in a mathematics textbook each day of the summer holiday, and this put her ahead of the other students in the next school year.[14][15] She attended Presdales School in Ware, Hertfordshire, England,[16] where a teacher inspired her to study mathematics.[17] She graduated from University College London (UCL) with an undergraduate degree in mathematics.[18] In 2011, she completed her thesis[19] and was awarded a PhD from UCL for research on fluid dynamics and the Navier–Stokes equations supervised by Frank T. Smith.[1][2][5][18]
Career and research
Fry at a conference in 2024
Fry was appointed as a lecturer at University College London in 2012. At the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, following a number of years as a senior lecturer and then associate professor, she was appointed professor in the Mathematics of Cities in 2021.[5] She joined the Faculty of Mathematics, University of Cambridge in January 2025 as the university's first Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics.[3]
TED and YouTube
In 2015, Fry decided to say "yes" to everything, which led to her trying stand-up comedy, a TED Talk (invited by the German neuroscientist Alina Strasser), and television work.[20]
On 30 March 2014, Fry gave a TED talk at TEDxBinghamtonUniversity[21] titled The Mathematics of Love, which as of December 2023 has attracted over 5.74 million views.[22] Her book The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation – in which she applies statistical and data-scientific models to dating, sex and marriage – was published by Simon and Schuster under the TED Books imprint in February 2015.[19][23]
Fry has appeared in several videos for a YouTube mathematics channel, Numberphile, run by Brady Haran.[24] She has also made an appearance on his podcast: The Numberphile Podcast.[25]
Radio and television
Fry regularly appears on mainstream media in the UK,[10] including in Computing Britain (2015, 12 episodes)[26] and The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry (with Adam Rutherford), which aired its 21st series in 2023.[27]
Fry has presented several BBC television programmes. In 2015, she presented a BBC Four film biography of Ada Lovelace.[28] In 2016, she co-presented Trainspotting Live with Peter Snow, a three-part series about trains and trainspotting, for the same channel.[29] In the BBC Two series City in the Sky Fry studied the logistics of aviation.[30] She also hosted The Joy of Data on BBC Four, which examines the history and human impact of data.[31] A further credit for 2016 was her co-hosting an episode of the BBC Two Horizon series with Dr Xand van Tulleken, titled How to Find Love Online.[32] In 2017, she presented an episode of Horizon titled 10 Things You Need to Know About the Future.[33]
At the Data of Tomorrow conference, 2017
In 2018, Fry presented Contagion! The BBC Four Pandemic, about the possible impact of a flu pandemic,[34] in which she said " ... we are about to simulate the outbreak of a fatal contagion throughout the UK. ... if I can succeed this will save lives when, not if, a real pandemic hits."[35] The programme used Haslemere, Surrey, as the site of the first simulated infection, and coincidentally in February 2020 the town saw the first recorded case of a person contracting COVID-19 from within the UK.[35]
In the same year she presented Size Matters,[36] on BBC Four, a two-part series, and Magic Numbers, on BBC Four, a three-part series which explored mathematical concepts.[37] She hosted a one-off 90-minute special of the BBC science programme Tomorrow's World alongside four presenters from the show's original run: Maggie Philbin, Howard Stableford, Judith Hann and Peter Snow.[38]
In 2019, Fry presented a BBC Four programme titled A Day in the Life of Earth which explored how Earth changes in a single day and how these daily changes are essential to human existence.[39] Fry also co-presented a Horizon episode titled The Honest Supermarket, which covered a range of issues, including expiry dates and their impact on food waste, microplastics in the human food supply and the impact food consumption has on the environment.[40] She presented the 2019 edition of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, entitled Secrets and lies, on the hidden numbers, rules and patterns that control daily lives;[41] the three lectures were broadcast on BBC Four.[42]
In 2020, Fry co-presented both The Great British Intelligence Test and Coronavirus Special – Part 2 with Michael Mosley on BBC Two.[43][44] She has presented further programmes for the BBC explaining the mathematics behind COVID-19 and other pandemics.[45] Around this time, she began a podcast DeepMind created for the artificial intelligence company, DeepMind.[46]
Fry was the guest interviewee on The Life Scientific on BBC Radio 4,[47] and a panellist on Have I Got News for You on 15 April and 28 October 2022 on BBC One. She has presented the show on 24 November 2023, 12 April and 18 October 2024.[48]
In July 2022, she presented the BBC Two documentary Unvaccinated, in which she investigated why a portion of the British population remained unvaccinated against COVID-19.[49] Reviewing in The Daily Telegraph, Anita Singh described the show as patronising, commenting that Fry's attempt to explain statistics using "jelly-bean roulette" treated the unvaccinated people who chose to appear in the show like "six-year-olds".[50] Jack Seale for The Guardian wrote that "Fry needs some reward for Unvaccinated (BBC Two), a documentary that requires a near-saintly level of tolerance just to watch, never mind present".[51]
Beginning 10 November 2022, Fry presented a six-part series on BBC Two, The Secret Genius Of Modern Life,[52] in which she investigates topics such as how credit cards came into being, their manufacture and how they work, and how we use apps to order takeaway deliveries.[53] The BBC commissioned a second six-part series, again presented by Fry and first broadcast in November 2023. Episodes include one on the secrets of producing the British passport, detailing the document's security features; she illustrated this with her own passport, which showed her date and place of birth.[54]
She presented multiple episodes of The Future With Hannah Fry on Bloomberg Originals, beginning in March 2023.[55][56]
In September 2023, BBC Radio Four started to broadcast Uncharted with Hannah Fry, a series of 15 minute documentaries about graphs.[57]
As of 2025[update] Fry has authored or co-authored four books. The first, The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation,[23] includes the "37% rule", a form of the secretary problem according to which roughly the first third of any potential partners should be rejected. The second, The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus,[59] discusses various Christmas-related topics and how mathematics can be involved in them, including a fair Secret Santa, decoration of Christmas trees, winning at Monopoly, and comparing the vocabulary of the Queen's Christmas message to that of the lyrics of Snoop Dogg.[18] Her third book is Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms,[60] which looks at the impact of algorithms that affect lives.[61] In 2021, she wrote Rutherford & Fry’s Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything (Abridged) with Adam Rutherford.[62]
Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine[60]
Rutherford and Fry’s Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything (Abridged)[62]
Other publications include:
What statistics can and can't tell us about ourselves[63][15]
Maps without places: the transformative power of turning numbers into pictures [64]
Fry has attempted to overturn the stereotype that mathematics is "boring" and not worth studying. Although she acknowledges the subject is difficult, she believes it is possible to frame it using stories that people can relate to, such as the material in her books.[17]
Awards and honours
In January 2024, Fry was appointed President of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA).[4] In 2013, Fry won the UCL Provost's Public Engager of the Year award. The award recognises the work that UCL's staff and students are doing to open up the university. Fry was nominated for her broad portfolio of public engagement activities.[65]
In 2024, Fry was awarded the David Attenborough Award by the Royal Society for her prolific science communication activity as the foremost populariser of maths in the country who continues to inspire young people to pursue maths and physics in fun and exciting ways."[69]
Personal life
Fry was married to Phil Lythell; they have two daughters[20][70] (born 2016/2017 and 2019[71][72]). They have since separated, though they continue to co-parent, and are still "really good friends".[71] Fry lives in South London.[73]
In January 2021, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer, and the following month underwent a radical hysterectomy.[74] She was commissioned by BBC Two[75] to write and present a Horizon documentary about her treatment and its long-term effects (in her case including lymphoedema),[76] in which she explores the statistics behind screening and decision-making by patients and doctors. The 60-minute programme Making Sense of Cancer with Hannah Fry was first shown on 2 June 2022.[77] Fry had reconstructive surgery, lymphaticovenular anastomosis.[73][78] About the lymphoedema treatment, Fry said, "Although we didn't know at the time, we took a very risk-averse route that we didn't need to... It's not really about regret. It's just that I feel like the calculation was made without me having the chance to put what I really cared about into the equation."[76]
1 2 The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus (2017), ISBN978-1784162740co-authored with fellow mathematician Thomas Oléron Evans)
1 2 Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine (2019) ISBN978-1784163068 initially titled Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms
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