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Mark Ronan Follow * Biography Please select page HomeBiographyBooksJournalismBroadcastingTheatre ReviewsTalksLanguagesMathematics Professor of Mathematics. Author of Symmetry and the Monster — a popular account of one of the great quests in mathematics. Specialist in Mesopotamian history and literature. Cold-water swimmer. Regular reviewer of opera and ballet. * Books * Journalism * Theatre Reviews * Talks * Languages * Mathematics LATEST THEATRE REVIEWS PETER GRIMES, ROYAL OPERA, MARCH 2022 March 19, 2022 In her new production of Peter Grimes Deborah Warner brought the setting up to date with detritus on the beach and yobbos threatening Ellen Orford. As Grimes himself Allan Clayton was outstanding, rough and ready but with mental issues in Warner’s sympathetic portrayal. Excellent contributions from Bryn Terfel as Captain Balstrode, and John Tomlinson as Swallow … Read more > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- JENUFA, WELSH NATIONAL OPERA, MARCH 2022 March 19, 2022 Janaček’s music elevates this tragic to a gripping intensity, given terrific effect under the baton of WNO’s music director Tomaš Hanus, who is Czech, and in view of the Russian invasion of Ukraine he spoke to the audience before the performance saying, “Let’s play today for humanity”. The orchestra responded with huge emotion and energy, … Read more > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DON GIOVANNI, WELSH NATIONAL OPERA, WNO, FEBRUARY 2022 March 8, 2022 Welsh National Opera revived their excellent 2011 staging with a cast whose vocal abilities superbly matched the needs of Mozart’s opera. It was as near perfect a performance as one could wish in a production that eschewed over-clever ideas, and was well worth the trip to Cardiff — my review in The Article. Read more > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SWAN LAKE, ROYAL BALLET, MARCH 2022 March 3, 2022 In the Royal Ballet’s 2018 production of Swan Lake the evil Von Rothbart appears in two guises, one as the sorcerer who has turned young maidens into swans, the other at court as the queen’s confidant, looking very much like a younger version of Vladimir Putin. This invites comparisons with Russian history — see my review … Read more > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN, ENGLISH NATIONAL OPERA, FEBRUARY 2022 February 22, 2022 Wonderful energy from the children, as various animals and woodland mushrooms, gave colour to an otherwise dull production, set in a wood yard. Some excellent singing from the Vixen, the Fox, and the humans who live in a far more circumscribed world than the animals. My review in The Article. Read more > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- See all Theatre Reviews LATEST JOURNALISM REALITY CHECK: MATHEMATICS IS NOT RACIST Engaging with students on the history of mathematics would do far more than pretending that the subject abounds with racism. My article in The Critic, 18 March 2021 Read more > A NEW LEASE OF LIFE FOR SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT? CARLO ROVELLI’S HELGOLAND A review of Carlo Rovelli’s new book on quantum theory, dealing with the superposition of two states, and quantum entanglement. The Article, 4 March 2021. Read more > JUST KEEP SWIMMING Those of us who partake in open air swimming should be allowed to return to this miraculous prophylactic, despite the semi-lockdown. The Critic, 12 November 2020. Read more > US ELECTION HISTORY — A PERSONAL VIEW Recollections about elections from the post-Vietnam era when I first went to America, and their relevance today. The Article, 11 November 2020. Read more > THE MAN BEHIND THE MONSTER The man who first glimpsed the Monster has died. He came to this vision via very precise arguments, but later had to fight German students who wanted to cancel his branch of mathematics. We need his type again to fight the new battle against those who would turn mathematics from careful argument and precision to woolliness and confusion. The Critic 24 August 2020. Read more > DECOLONISE … MATHS? If ‘decolonising maths’ means reassessing who did what, we need to put Greek geometry into perspective. Who invented algebra? And for modern arithmetic we have to thank the Sumerians, whose ethnicity and skin colour remains conveniently unknown. My article in The Critic, 7 July 2020 Read more > DARK MATTERS Academics in this country need to allow new ideas rather than orthodoxy and group-think. See my article in The Critic on 22 June 2020 about the dis-invitation of a physicist who was scheduled to give a technical talk. Read more > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- See all Journalism FEATURE Symmetry and the Monster is the story of a mathematical quest that began two hundred years ago in revolutionary France, led to the biggest collaboration ever between mathematicians across the world, and revealed the ‘Monster’ – not monstrous at all, but a structure of exquisite beauty and complexity. > This book tells for the first time the fascinating story of the biggest > theorem ever to have been proved. Mark Ronan graphically describes not only > the last few decades of the chase, but also some of the more interesting > byways, including my personal favourite, the one I called “Monstrous > Moonshine”. John H. Conway, von Neumann Chair of Mathematics, Princeton University -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Opera on 3: for the BBC Radio 3 broadcast (on 19 November 2016) of Parsifal from this summer’s Bayreuth Festival, I was the guest with presenter Christopher Cook. We discussed the opera and its production, which I reviewed for the Daily Telegraph on 27 July 2016. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRUTH AND BEAUTY: THE HIDDEN WORLD OF SYMMETRY On the face of it, symmetry may seem simple, but diving beneath the surface reveals a whole new world. Over the last 100 years, the mathematical idea of symmetry has proved to be a guiding light for the world of physics. But what does a mathematician mean by symmetry? How does this link in with the world around us? And could it be the key to the mysterious ‘Theory of Everything’? This was a BBC Radio programme on Symmetry in the Naked Scientists series. Here is the link --------------------------------------------------------------------------------