How long have you worked at the Uni? What does your role involve?
I came here in 1995, so quite a long time ago now.
I'm a Professor of Mathematics, which means doing research, thinking about problems in mathematics, and talking to people about that. I do quite a wide range of teaching within the department, mostly teaching mathematics students, butI have taught some students from other departments too. The old fashioned way of standing up and writing on a vertical writing surface proves to be a good way to teach pure mathematics. But there are other things you can do as well, of course. There's a lot more to teaching than that. I try to spend as much time as I can talking to individual students, but that's difficult because they're large classes. Then there are research students, of which I have had 11 now. So that's something that takes a certain amount of time and thought.
Then there's some administration, and I'm on Senate at the moment. But obviously we all have to chip in to keep the department running, as that's just part of the job.
What would you most like to achieve while at the University?
There are two possible answers to that. I could talk about what I would like to achieve personally, which would probably be something in terms of having done interesting mathematics and having got other people interested in mathematics. Or I might try to measure success in terms of the success of my research students, for example, which combines those two aspects.
But then you could also treat that as meaning ‘what would you like to the university to have achieved?’ A lot of the University’s focus is on undergraduate teaching: it's a research-based University, but what we do collectively is undergraduate teaching. And I think I'm actually fairly happy with what we have achieved.
From being a really quite small, and in some ways quite marginal, provider of mathematics teaching we've become one of the biggest and one of the best mathematics departments in the country, from a teaching point of view. And we are, I think, very successful at giving students an interesting experience, and producing students who are able to make the most of that in terms of jobs or whatever else in the future.
What piece of advice would you like to give to a student?
One thing that I often tell new first year students when they get here is: before you came here you were probably close to being the best student in mathematics, when you were at school. You are used to being better at mathematics than the people around you (and I say mathematics, but this would apply to any other subject).
But when you come here, on average, you will be average, and this takes some getting used to. There are two things you should do: one is remind yourself that whatever happens within these buildings, you're still very much better at mathematics than almost everybody, and the other is that you should expect to be perpetually slightly bewildered. But then you look back at the things that you were taught six weeks ago and you think, why did I think that was difficult? And when you do that, you realise what a long way you've come.
Who was your most influential teacher/educator, and why?
Probably my father. Not that I didn't have very good teachers at school or university, but my father was a mathematician, and rather an unusual one in many ways. He was Indian. He must have realised early on that I was fairly good at mathematics, and he got the level of encouragement and pressure right. He was willing to explain things to me that were a long way beyond what I would be getting at school at that stage, but he did it without ever creating any kind of obligation on me, just like somebody telling you a story really. I think that sort of relaxed attitude was very good for me, because it meant that I could follow mathematics just as something that I was interested in and that I liked.
What was your first job?
Boring, but it probably was a mathematics job. I did miscellaneous bits and pieces in the summer vacations, but I'm not sure I was ever actually more than just volunteering. But after my PhD, I went to India for a few months, because as I said, I'm half Indian. I've got family in India so I went there to see them and to work, as straight after a PhD is not a good time to suddenly stop doing mathematics (not if you want a career in mathematics). I had a visiting post at the Tata Institute in Bombay for three months, so that was the first one that was technically a job. And then I went and did a proper postdoc in the Netherlands for two years.
Where is your favourite holiday destination and why?
Anywhere in Italy. I've been an Italophile for a very long time. When I was about 12, we actually spent a year in Genoa. I simply went to the local Italian school, so I was totally immersed in it. I came back with a fairly decent command of the language, which possibly accounts for the fact that about a third of my research students have been Italian. I’m comfortable in the language, and used to the way the country works (or does not work).
What’s your favourite book or album and why?
That's an impossible question. This is a world that contains Dante, Yeates, and The Code of the Woosters, and you want me to pick one? Come on! With books, it's really completely impossible.
Anybody who's interested in music in any way will mentally play the Desert Island Discs game in their head, but if you ask the same person the same questions on a different day you'll get completely different answers. But I think the thing that would come up most often for me would be Opus 131, Beethoven’s quartet.
If you could meet anyone in the world dead or alive who would it be and why?
I think it's also an impossible question for some of the same reasons. I think “I like the music of Sibelius, wouldn’t it be interesting to meet him?” Well no, it probably wouldn't. He would probably drink too much and ramble on about swans the whole time. It's probably the wrong thing to try and meet people whose output you like.
It certainly would be a good idea to meet people whose conversation would be entertaining. I’m reasonably sure that you would be entertained by Sydney Smith or by Germaine Greer, actually, I know you would be entertained by Germaine Greer because I have met her, and I was.
So yes, perhaps one should try to meet people who are best known for good conversation.
Tell us your favourite joke
The jokes that I make, which probably nobody finds funny, tend to be complicated ones which only work if you know two particular obscure words in different languages.
I play cricket for the University staff and postgraduate students Cricket Club (we could do with more staff playing for us) and I write the match report after each match, and some people seem to think that is quite entertaining, so maybe I can do humour.