When people ask me what my religion is, I say it's the Arsenal.

It's important to me that no one can say I'm not pumping out high-level research.

The reason why we do maths is because it's like poetry. It's about patterns, and that really turned me on. It made me feel that maths was in tune with the other things I liked doing.

I think science is a foreign land for many people, so I think of my role as an ambassador's job.

The wonderful thing about maths is it's a totally logical subject, and a pathway has been marked out. I think a lot of these things can be crystallised in something quite essential, that people can get. If I can't explain it, I realise that's probably because I don't completely understand it myself.

Mathematics has beauty and romance. It's not a boring place to be, the mathematical world. It's an extraordinary place; it's worth spending time there.