WHAT WE CANNOT KNOW (NO MATTER HOW MANY OMEGA 3 FISH OIL CAPSULES WE CONSUME…) - MAR 28 - 5.21PM

Marcus du Sautoy, "What We Cannot Know"

Well, what a difference 90 minutes can make - back at 2.30pm everything that could go wrong in the Sultan Nazrin Shah Centre at Worcester College for Professor and broadcaster Jim Al-Khalili...did. This time, same venue, same overcast sky, same stiff breeze, but the world had changed dramatically because EVERYTHING suddenly, and with no explanation...worked. With a musical overture that could have been straight from the soundtrack of 'Alien', the audience of schoolchildren and more 'senior' individuals with long shaggy beards but clearly piercing intellects prepared for the arrival of Marcus du Sautoy. And they weren't disappointed. Very much a t-shirt, baseball cap and blue-suede shoes type of guy (if he'd ridden in on a Harley it wouldn't have surprised me) he immediately established his 'street' credentials with the kind of energetic attitude you might see on the terraces at Emirates Stadium (and yes that's appropriate because he's an Arsenal fanatic). Du Sautoy is the Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University (replacing Richard Dawkins) and frankly they couldn't have picked a better man. He's FANTASTIC, unravelling the mysteries of science so even Donald Trump can follow them. Talking about his new book "What We Cannot Know" which questions whether science can ever know it all, he proved a force majeure for lifting the lid on the simply unknowable. Quite how mathematics can produce such a blisteringly good entertainer may in fact prove to be one of THE great mysteries. But until anyone can unravel that conundrum, I was just happy to wallow in a brilliance I didn't understand but couldn't get enough of...