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Asked by Liv to Kevin, Liz, Beccy, Rosie on 9 Jun 2017.
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Kevin Pollock answered on 9 Jun 2017:
My grandfather – he was perhaps the kindest man I’ve ever known and I would like him to have met my daughter and for her to meet him.
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anon answered on 9 Jun 2017:
I’d say my grandmother – because I’d love her to meet my sons (11 and 14). She died when I was pregnant for my elder son.
If you want a non-personal choice. I’d say Leonardo da Vinci. I’d love to be able to take a flight with him, send him on a submarine trip (I’d skip that as I’m a bit claustrophobic), show him rockets and moon rockets, show him brain surgery and vaccination. I think he’d like PCs and mobile phones – what do you think @LdaVinci would tweet first?
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Liz Buckingham-Jeffery answered on 11 Jun 2017:
(I wrote this and then realised how long it was! I got carried away! So, tl;dr I’d bring back too many dead mathematicians!)
So, I know this answer is super nerdy, so I’ll apologise for that now! But I’d probably bring back some mathematicians who I thought were pretty cool and who I think had more to contribute. When I did my maths degree at university I did one module called “History of Maths” and I found it really interesting.
So first up, a guy called Évariste Galois. He was a mathematician from the 1800s who died in a duel! He was only 21 years old when he died and he had already done so much good work. If he had lived longer he would probably have discovered loads more maths facts, who knows. So it would be interesting to bring him back from the past.
Secondly, there was a mathematician called Pierre de Fermat. In the margin of a book he wrote down a mathematical fact, which we now call “Fermat’s Last Theorem” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem). He basically wrote: “this thing is true and I can prove that it is true. But there is no space in this margin to write the proof.” What a lad. That was back in the 1600s. People then tried for hundreds of years to prove it was true, and a proof wasn’t found until 1995. It would be cool to bring back Pierre de Fermat and see if he really did have a proof for the fact he wrote down (although I think he was just trolling us!).
Unfortunately, the history of maths, and many of the sciences, is dominated by the discoveries of clever men because in the past women didn’t have equal chances to get education. Despite this, in the 1800s Ada Lovelace basically become the first person to write down a computer programme. It would be amazing to bring her back and show her what computers can do now.
Did you watch the film “The man who knew infinity” that came out last year or the year before? It was a really good film about the life of a mathematician called Srinivasa Ramanujan. It was cool for me to see Hollywood making a film about a mathematician and this kind of history! I’d recommend watching it if you haven’t!
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Rosie Fok answered on 12 Jun 2017:
Robin Williams. He always seemed like such a warm and sensitive person, with the ability to make others laugh. His suicide started a lot of conversations about mental health, something as a society we need to make it easier to talk about and be more comfortable talking about. He had a type of dementia, another big topic we need to talk about and try to tackle as a society. I think he would have helped us to start those conversations with sensitivity and humour.
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