To celebrate everyone’s favourite Maths channel turning 12, Sophia Merow penned an article for the ‘Math Horizons’ magazine published by the Mathematical Association of America (MAA). I was delighted to be asked to add some comments, which you can find below.

The full article is available on the MAA webpage here.

Did Brady Haran recruit you or did you approach him?

I actually met Brady at VidCon 2019 in London where I approached him after a panel discussion session. I mentioned that I was a mathematician as well as a fan of the channel which he seemed to appreciate! We talked a little about my research and then eventually I offered to explain the Navier-Stokes equations for Numberphile which at the time was one of the Millennium Problems missing from the channel. As they say, the rest is history…

What made you want/willing to be a Numberphile contributor?

I’ve been watching Numberphile since I was an undergraduate maths student so once I started any own channel with Tom Rocks Maths, I think the goal was always to try to emanate its success. For anyone doing maths on YouTube I imagine being featured on the ‘original YouTube maths channel’ is the dream – and I feel very fortunate to have been able to achieve it. 

What has been the highlight of your Numberphile experience?

In terms of videos, the first recording session where we did the fluid dynamics trilogy will always live long in the memory. As will the video on surface tension which was interrupted by ducks from my garden! But, the main highlight has just been hanging out with Brady and being able to talk all things maths to the millions of Numberphile fans.