Hannah Fry

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Hannah Fry is a British mathematician, author and broadcaster. She is Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a fellow of Queens’ College, Cambridge, and president of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. She was previously a professor at University College London.

Hannah Fry began performing stand-up comedy in 2015, leading to a TED Talk and television work. Since then, she has regularly appeared on mainstream media in the UK, including regular appearances in The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry, with Adam Rutherford, on BBC Radio 4. From series 22, in September 2024, Dara Ó Briain took over from Rutherford as co-presenter of Curious Cases.

In 2015, she presented a BBC Four film biography of computing pioneer Ada Lovelace. The following year, she co-presented Trainspotting Live with Peter Snow, a three-part series about trains and trainspotting, for the same channel. In the BBC Two series City in the Sky Hannah Fry studied the logistics of aviation. She hosted The Joy of Data on BBC Four, which examines the history and human impact of data. 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.

In 2018, Hannah Fry presented Contagion! The BBC Four Pandemic, about the possible impact of a flu pandemic, 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.” 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. She later hosted a one-off 90-minute special of the BBC science programme Tomorrow’s World alongside four of the show’s previous presenters: Maggie Philbin, Howard Stableford, Judith Hann and Peter Snow.

In 2019, Hannah 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. 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, being only the fourth ever mathematician to deliver the lectures. They were broadcast on BBC Four.

Hannah Fry co-presented 2020’s The Great British Intelligence Test on BBC Two. She has presented further programmes for the BBC explaining the mathematics behind COVID-19 and other pandemics. She was the guest interviewee on The Life Scientific on BBC Radio 4 in 2021, and has appeared on Have I Got News for You.

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. Reviewing in The Daily Telegraph, Anita Singh described the show as patronising, commenting that Hannah 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”. Jack Seale for The Guardian wrote that “Hannah Fry needs some reward for a documentary that requires a near-saintly level of tolerance just to watch, never mind present”.

Hannah Fry began a six-part series in 2022 on BBC Two, The Secret Genius Of Modern Life, in which she investigates topics such as how credit cards came into being, their manufacture and how they work, and potential future developments. The BBC commissioned a second six-part series, again presented by Hannah Fry and first broadcast in November 2023. One episode showed secrets of producing the British passport, including a factory where they are produced, and criticised electronic gates at airports. She presented multiple episodes of The Future With Hannah Fry on Bloomberg Originals, beginning in March 2023. Later that year, Radio Four started to broadcast Uncharted with Hannah Fry, a series of 15 minute documentaries about graphs.

Hannah Fry acted as the ‘chief number cruncher’ for Channel 4’s coverage of the 2024 United Kingdom general election, analysing results data as it came in overnight. She correctly predicted the Labour Party would win, but cautioned the party that they should “dampen their expectations”.