Background

Simon Singh was born on September 19, 1964, in Wellington, Somerset, United Kingdom to the family of immigrants from Punjab, India. He grew up in Wellington, Somerset. His mother always emphasized the importance of education, his father got him interested in how things work and elder sister made sure he did his homework. At the age of nine, Singh declared that he wanted to be a nuclear physicist.

Education

Simon Singh attended Wellington School. He studied physics at Imperial College London receiving a Bachelor of Science degree. He was active in the student union, becoming President of the Royal College of Science Union. Singh earned a Doctor of Philosophy in particle physics from the University of Cambridge as a postgraduate student of Emmanuel College in 1990.

Career

In 1983, Simon Singh was part of the UA2 experiment in CERN. In 1987, Singh taught science at The Doon School, the independent all-boys' boarding school in India. In 1990 Singh returned to England and joined the British Broadcasting Company’s Science Department, where he was a producer and director in programmes such as Tomorrow’s World and Horizon. In 1996 he directed Fermat’s Last Theorem, a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award-winning documentary about the world’s most notorious mathematical problem. The documentary was also aired in America as part of the Nova series. The Proof, as it was re-titled, was nominated for an Emmy.

The story of this notorious mathematical problem was also the subject of Singh’s first book, imaginatively entitled Fermat’s Last Theorem. This was the first book about mathematics to become a No.1 bestseller in the United Kingdom. In America the book was called “Fermat’s Enigma”.

In 1997 Singh began working on his second book, The Code Book, a history of codes and codebreaking. As well as explaining the science of codes and describing the impact of codebreaking on history, the book also shows that cryptography is more important today than ever before. The book proposes the idea that while living in the Information Age, and one of the best ways to protect information is to encrypt it.

The Code Book has resulted in a return to television for Singh. He presented The Science of Secrecy, a 5-part series for Channel 4. The stories in the series range from the cipher that sealed the fate of Mary Queen of Scots to the coded Zimmermann Telegram that changed the course of the First World War. Other programmes discuss how two great nineteenth-century geniuses raced to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs and how modern encryption can guarantee privacy on the Internet.

Singh’s other books include “Big Bang” and “Trick or Treatment?“. After publishing an article about chiropractic in April 2008, he was sued by the British Chiropractic Association in a libel case that last two years, which he eventually won. Along the way, he became closely involved with the Libel Reform Campaign, and he continues to lobby for a fairer libel law.

Singh’s latest book (2013) is The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets, which explores the vast amount of mathematics smuggled into the world’s most successful sitcom by its highly numerate writing team.

As well as solo lectures, Singh has taken part in several bigger shows, including Theatre of Science with Professor Richard Wiseman, Nine Lessons with Robin Ince and the 2011 Uncaged Monkey Tour with Brian Cox, Ben Goldacre, and Robin Ince.

The skeptic movement has taken up more of Singh’s time in recent years, and he has been delighted to talk at various Skeptics in the Pub events, take part in James Randi’s international The Amazing Meeting events and support efforts such at the 10:23 homeopathic overdose challenge.

Singh has also helped to start education projects. Undergraduate Ambassadors Scheme encourages university science departments to work more closely with schools, while the Enigma project conducts maths/cryptography workshops in schools with a genuine Enigma cipher machine.

Campaign for Science and Engineering, Sense About Science and the Science Media Centre are three excellent organizations, and I have been working closely with all of them over the last few years. In particular, Sense About Science has been at the forefront of the Libel Reform Campaign.

Achievements

• 

  Simon Singh brings mathematics and cryptology to life through his fascinating and accessible keynote speeches and demonstrations. Singh’s ability to make the complex subjects simple and invigorate engaging interest in maths and science makes him an ideal keynote speaker for events around this theme. His impact on the popularisation of science was acclaimed and encouraged by Science Writing Award in 2006, Kelvin Prize in 2008, HealthWatch Award in 2010 and Leelavati Award in 2010. In 2003 he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to science, technology, and engineering in education and science communication.
  
  Singh also acknowledged an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Loughborough University, honorary degree in Mathematics from the University of Southampton, an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from Royal Holloway (the University of London),the University of Kent, the University of St Andrews, and an Honorary Doctor of Technology from the University of the West of England.
  
  Singh received a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award for Best Documentary in 1996 and Emmy nomination, both for Fermat's Last Theorem TV-show.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Code Book: The Secrets Behind Codebreaking

    (Unpack the science of secrecy and discover the methods be...)

    2016
  • The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets

    (You may have watched hundreds of episodes of The Simpsons...)

    2013
  • The Atheist's Guide to Christmas

    (What do you get an atheist for Christmas? If you're an at...)

    2009
  • Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine

    (Whether you are an ardent believer in alternative medicin...)

    2008
  • The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography

    (In his first book since the bestselling Fermat's Enigma, ...)

    1999
  • Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe

    (A half century ago, a shocking Washington Post headline c...)

    2004
  • The science of secrecy: The secret history of codes and codebreaking

    (A TV tie-in edition of "The Code Book" filmed as a prime-...)

    1999
  • Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem

    (xn + yn = zn, where n represents 3, 4, 5, ...no solution ...)

    1997
  • Fermat's Last Theorem 1997

Views

Quotations: “Romantics might like to think of themselves as being composed of stardust. Cynics might prefer to think of themselves as nuclear waste.”

“God exists since mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exists since we cannot prove it.”

“Similarly, if you’re trying to prove something mathematically, it’s possible that no proof exists.”

“A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.”

“[to Martin Hellman] Unless you're foolish enough to be continually excited, you won't have the motivation, you won't have the energy to carry it through.”

“An astronomer, a physicist, and a mathematician (it is said) were holidaying in Scotland. Glancing from a train window, they observed a black sheep in the middle of a field. “How interesting,” observed the astronomer, “all Scottish sheep are black!” To which the physicist responded, “No, no! Some Scottish sheep are black!” The mathematician gazed heavenward in supplication, and then intoned, “In Scotland there exists at least one field, containing at least one sheep, at least one side of which is black.”

Membership

• Founder

  Good Thinking Society , United Kingdom

• Co-founder

  Undergraduate Ambassadors Scheme , United Kingdom

• Trustee

  National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts , United Kingdom

• Trustee

  Science Museum Group , United Kingdom

• Patron

  Humanists UK , United Kingdom

Personality

The British Chiropractic Association (BCA) unsuccessfully sued Simon Singh over an opinion piece published in the Guardian newspaper in 2008, in which he had suggested chiropractors lacked evidence for their medical claims on treating childhood maladies such as colic and asthma. The BCA filed the lawsuit even though the Guardian offered an apology, a clarification and a right of reply. When the case was brought against him, The Guardian supported him and funded his legal advice, as well as offering to pay the BCA's legal costs in an out-of-court settlement if Singh chose to settle.

In a preliminary hearing, Mr. Justice Eady ruled that by using the phrase “[the BCA] happily promotes bogus treatments”, Singh was accusing the association of “thoroughly disreputable conduct”. The judge added that as Singh was stating facts instead of opinion he could not use the defense of “fair comment”. Singh maintained that he was not accusing the association of deliberately promoting sham treatments but simply that their claims were not based on evidence.

In the final ruling, three Appeal Court judges overturned the initial ruling, concluding that Singh’s piece was legally permissible as fair comment. They said: “Accordingly this litigation has almost certainly had a chilling effect on public debate which might otherwise have assisted potential patients to make informed choices about the use of chiropractic.”

Author opinion states that the Appeal Court judges made the right decision. As Singh’s article was clearly published in the Guardian’s comment pages, it was a statement of opinion rather than fact. Unfortunately for Singh, England's defamation law leans in favour of the claimant. The law is in the process of being overhauled to address precisely such concerns; under the draft bill, Singh would have been able to use the defense of “honest opinion” - an honest statement of opinion on a matter of public interest - to fight his case.

More generally, libel laws should not be used to muzzle genuine criticism or stifle scientific debate. In this particular case, the Guardian gave the BCA the opportunity to respond to Singh’s piece, which it declined. Had the BCA responded by providing evidence to counter Singh’s claims, both parties would have been saved an expensive, two-year legal battle.

To defend himself for the libel suit, Singh's out-of-pocket legal costs were tens of thousands of pounds, but the trial has acted as a catalyst and focus for libel reform campaigners resulting in all major parties in the 2010 general election making manifesto commitments to libel reform. On 25 April 2013, the Defamation Act 2013 received Queen Elizabeth II’s Royal Assent and became law.

Interests

• Sport & Clubs

  football

• Music & Bands

  glam rock

Connections

Simon Singh married a British-Indian journalist and broadcaster Anita Anand in 2007. They have two sons and live in south-west London.

Wife:

Anita Anand

Acquaintance:

Katie Melua

Singh made headlines in 2005 when he criticized the Katie Melua song "Nine Million Bicycles" for inaccurate lyrics referring to the size of the observable universe. Singh proposed corrected lyrics, though he used the value of 13.7 billion light years; accounting for expansion of the universe, the comoving distance to the edge of the observable universe is 46.5 billion light years. BBC Radio 4's Today programme brought Melua and Singh together in a radio studio where Melua recorded a tongue-in-cheek version of the song that had been written by Singh.

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 166 This volume of Contemporary Authors contains biographical information on approximately 300 modern writers.
  1998