What I love most is that Hannah Fry didn't get into the Cambridge undergraduate(?) math program (maths programme for you Brits) but became a math professor at Cambridge. Go Hannah!
Fun fact: When I applied to Cambridge I was interviewed by Mary Beard.
Either due to corruption or, even more likely, institutional biases.
Malcolm Gladwell has a few episodes of revisionist history that looks at some US universities who fall into this trap.
Even with all that said; the chances of a selection process for 17/18 year olds being able to correctly select the best future adults in their field is very low.
Another good example; the number of young geniuses or prodigies (whether maths, chess, acting etc.) who don't make anything of themselves.
It's very hard to predict from a half hour interview precisely who will do well in future, and in fact some people might do better having gone to other universities. Oxford and Cambridge aren't the best choice for everybody - I'm sure being a bigger fish in a smaller pond suits some people better.
I read a study a while ago (sorry Google didn't find it again) that said a lot of exceptionally gifted people just don't apply to elite universities. Instead, the main characteristic of applicants tends to be that they are extremely driven.
Drive tends to not correlate well to long term success without talent as a companion. Therefore a lot of people at Cambridge (which I think was the example) tend to do no better than the average in later life (notably wasn't true for PPE grads obviously)
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-claims-by-Malcolm-Gladwe...
that's a complete sentence already
Top universities hiring professors can pick any they want.
But also discovering a passion for academia can occur at any institution, reaching the pinnacle of the career is an enormous commitment.
> She is the first Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge,
I am not sure that she is a "math professor", but that she is a "professor of the public understanding of mathematics". The latter seems softer.
She is an expert in applied mathematics (president of the applicable UK institute, actually) and this is absolutely of a piece with that; it's not some wishy-washy thing that she does.
Public understanding of science has proved to be a valuable field, and I think this will be important. Her Oxford opposite number, arguably, is Marcus du Sautoy, who has the Public Understanding of Science professorship that was originally created for Dawkins.
But, that was not at Cambridge, which is what the original post by vgivanovic claimed, right? It was at University College London.
> Public understanding of science has proved to be a valuable field,
I never contested that, assuming that it is done responsibly and well. But that field, as well as a large proportion of her activities and work, as well as the title "Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics", seem softer and less hardcore than many other titles for professors regarding mathematics.
A field can be both soft and valuable, assuming the field is handled responsibly and well.
> president of the applicable UK institute
A president is not primarily a researcher, right? More about external relations, strategy, management, etc., as far as I know. Mentioning her being a president weakens your argument, and strengthens my argument, as far as I can tell. There are other former presidents of that institute that likewise have had a more educational focus instead of hardcore research focus, like Celia Hoyles as far as I can tell.
> She is an expert in applied mathematics
She does have a PhD, but apart from that, her research work has been more focused on softer topics as far as I can tell. Do you know of any work after her PhD that was more hardcore research? The publications I found were more soft, like "The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus (2015)", a few years after completing her PhD.
Do you know if she has been employed in the private sector regarding what one could perceive as more hardcore research or engineering? She seems to be very hardworking and active, and have written a lot of books and worked with a lot of movies and other media, apart from being a president of an institute and being a professor, so it would be impressive if she also found both time and energy for hardcore research. I don't know if other professors would be able to take on that many challenges at once. She cannot be described as lazy by any means.
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01303
https://www.thelancet.com/article/S1473-3099(20)30457-6/full...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03164-7
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.16.20023754v...
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-journal-of-...
Etc etc. That’s papers in Nature, The Lancet, The European Journal of Applied Mathematics etc. If you actually searched you would have found tons and tons of papers and citations. She clearly does “hardcore” research by any reasonable definition as you would expect given she has been for some time a professor at UCL which is a top-tier university.
She is a properly impressive person who warrants no shade, but it never surprises me to see it.