Blueprints: How Mathematics Shapes Creativity with Marcus du Sautoy
Tue 03 Jun 2025
7:00pm at Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights, 14-15 John St, Bath, BA1 2JL
All tickets include 15% off any books purchased on the night, a glass of wine or soft drink, author talk, Q&A and signing.
Other ways to book:
Email books@mrbsemporium.com, call 01225 331155 or pop into the shop at 14-15 John Street, Bath. BA1 2JL.
We are thrilled to welcome Marcus du Sautoy back to Mr B’s for his brand new book, Blueprints: How Mathematics Shapes Creativity.
After a sold out event back in 2023 for Around the World in 80 Games, we jumped at the chance to host Marcus once again. Blueprints is a delightfully bold exploration of creativity and mathematics, and why the two need not be incompatible in the way most of us think they are.
Marcus du Sautoy has been named by the Independent on Sunday as one of the UK’s leading scientists, has written extensively for the Guardian, The Times and the Daily Telegraph and has appeared on Radio 4 on numerous occasions.
About the book:
Many artists are unaware of the mathematics that bubble beneath their craft, while some consciously use it for inspiration. Our instincts might tell us that these two subjects are incompatible forces with nothing in common, but what if we’re wrong?
Marcus du Sautoy, acclaimed mathematician and Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, looks to art, music, design and literature to uncover the key mathematical structures that underpin both human creativity and the natural world. Blueprints takes us from the earliest stone circles to the modernist architecture of Le Corbusier, from Bach’s circular compositions to Radiohead’s disruptive soundscapes, and from Shakespeare’s hidden numerical clues to the Dada artists who embraced randomness.
Instead of polar opposites we find a complementary relationship that spans a vast historical and geographic landscape. Whether we are searching for meaning in an abstract painting or deciphering poetry, there are blueprints everywhere: prime numbers, symmetry, fractals and the weirder worlds of Hamiltonian cycles and hyperbolic geometry. Nature similarly exploits these structures to achieve the wonders of our universe.
In this innovative and delightfully bold exploration of creativity, Marcus explains how we make art, why a creative mindset is vital for discovering new mathematics and how a fundamental connection to the natural world intrinsically links these two subjects.
PRAISE FOR MARCUS DU SAUTOY:
‘Brilliantly clear and captivating prose’ Stephen Fry
‘A brilliant storyteller’ Independent
‘Marcus makes it seem so easy, and such fun, to begin to understand that which appears complex, frightening and beautiful, and the magic of being human’ Philippe Sands