She is great at popularity regarding mathematics, but her achievements do not seem to be primarily within hardcore mathematical research, more within popularity and communication.
> 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 was a professor in the mathematics of cities (applied spatial mathematics) before that — in her early thirties.
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.
> She was a professor in the mathematics of cities (applied spatial mathematics) before that — in her early thirties.
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.
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.
There are examples like Stephen Hawking, and he did truly impressive work in hardcore science as far as I know, despite the challenges and obstacles that he had in life. Hannah Fry has done a lot of soft work, lots of books and other media, lots of activity, a very hardworking person, and very skilled at popularity work. But that does not change my impression that her focus is not really on hardcore science.
You’re not exactly making the best impression here. This is such a bizarre thread. You have nit-picked someone’s choice of words into an extraordinary series of implicit slights against someone who has won a prize for the very thing at which she excels, and you really are inviting a lot of theories as to why; very few of them favourable.
What a small-minded, mean-spirited, charlatan and poser you are!
Having gone through all your comments in this thread, it is clear that you are just an "anonymous coward" and a troll, deriding and denigrating other folks commendable life work for no reason at all.
Instead of hiding behind anonymity, why don't you share your qualifications and competencies with us so that we can judge for ourselves on what basis you made the above statements and what they are worth? Do you have the spine to stand behind your criticisms in real life?
Your criticisms above are just general "shade-throwing and innuendos" with nothing specific to them. Preprints have far greater readership (and hence are a form of informal peer review) than official journals due to lack of paywall restrictions. The position of an author's name in a paper does not always reflect the magnitude of their contribution to it. Often it is just alphabetical, seniority-based (i.e. age), in-group vs. out-group or simply first-come first-noted. Your comments about statistics are laughable. Do you even know what you are talking about? Probability/Statistics are fundamental to Hannah's work. Contrary to what you may think many do check/verify the data which they study in a paper (it is trivial with Computers/AI nowadays). Pointing to reproducibility crisis/scandals simply implies that you have nothing worthwhile to contribute but are simply "throwing shade" for the sake of it (which any fool can do).
Hannah Fry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Fry) has a PhD from UCL for research on fluid dynamics and the Navier–Stokes equations. Do you know how hardcore a domain that is in Applied Mathematics/Physics? She then became lecturer/professor at "UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCL_Centre_for_Advanced_Spatia... Do you have any idea of what they do? She then was made a "Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering" and then became President of the "Institute of Mathematics and its Applications". All before finally joining Cambridge as the university's first "Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics". Google Scholar will show one the list of papers authored/co-authored by her if anybody wants to check.
By any measure the above is an outstanding record in mathematics scholarship. Nobody is claiming that she is the second coming of Euler/Gauss but in her own way she has achieved and done much in and for mathematics.
She chose to work on the popularization of mathematics and has done an excellent job of it in recognition of which the "International Mathematical Union" awarded the "Leelavati Prize" to her for outstanding contributions for increasing public awareness of mathematics as an intellectual discipline and the crucial role it plays in diverse human endeavors...[and]...outstanding public outreach work for mathematics. (https://www.mathunion.org/imu-awards/leelavati-prize)
Given how Modern Science and Mathematics feels like sheer "magic" to the common man (because they are not well explained and hence hard to understand) we need more people like Hannah who work on explaining/popularizing them; the main reason that Cambridge/Oxford/Other universities are establishing chairs for these disciplines. I would argue that this is the need of the hour for all scientific disciplines now.
> 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.