Sarah Hart announced as future President 31 January 2025

The Mathematical Association is delighted to announce that Sarah Hart will be its President during 2026-27, following on from Paul Glaister.

Sarah is a mathematician and author. She is Professor Emerita of Mathematics and Fellow of Birkbeck College (University of London), and has recently served a four-year term as Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, the first woman to hold this chair since its creation in 1597.

Sarah studied at Oxford and Manchester, gaining her PhD in 2000. Postdoctoral research and teaching followed, including a prestigious Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Fellowship, before she was appointed to a lectureship at Birkbeck in 2004. Her research is largely in group theory, which is the main tool used by mathematicians to understand symmetry. She became Professor of Mathematics at Birkbeck in 2013, and served as Assistant Dean for Retention and Widening Participation from 2012-2016 and Head of the Department of Economics, Mathematics and Statistics from 2016-2019. She also served a three-year term as President of the British Society for the History of Mathematics from 2021-23.

As a hugely popular lecturer with over 20 years teaching experience, she is a regular speaker at international events, and has written for publications including the New York Times and New Scientist. Sarah is particularly interested in the cultural, historical and creative impact of mathematics, and the links between mathematics and the arts. Her first book, Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature, published in 2023, was a New York Times Book review Editor’s Choice, and won the Mathematical Association of America’s Euler Book Prize in 2024.

On being invited to become president, Sarah said “I’m honoured to have been chosen to serve as Mathematical Association President. I’m looking forward to working with this brilliant organisation to support mathematics and mathematics educators in any way I can. As I’m especially interested in the links between mathematics and other creative subjects, during my Presidency I would love to explore ways to increase opportunities for cross-disciplinary connections with the arts and humanities.”