Articles By Mark Ronan
December 2017 / January 2018
Innumeracy at the top of European politics beggared Greece and may now vitiate Brexit negotiations
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November 2017
An ancient Mesopotamian tablet shows Babylonian trigonometrists had long anticipated the Greeks
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September 2017
For the first time in the history of the Bayreuth Festival, a Jewish director staged a new production
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June 2017
Forget 'best in the world' — the Berlin Philharmonic may not even be the best orchestra in Berlin
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April 2017
Trying to change the calendar to accommodate religious festivals has been a centuries-old minefield
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October 2016
Private festivals avoid the absurd interpretations of classic operas that shame the subsidised sector
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July/August 2016
Leonhard Euler was the presiding genius at the courts of Peter, Frederick and Catherine the Great
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April 2016
An Indian genius had little formal education but his findings astounded Cambridge mathematicians
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November 2015
The greatest scientists, such as Einstein, often made their greatest discoveries by thought experiments
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September 2015
When it comes to summer festival opera, Britain tends to get it right
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July/August 2015
There is a link between a great Jewish musical and the search for a historic mathematical proof
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January/February 2015
Alexander Grothendieck was a genius who reshaped mathematics but then withdrew from society
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September 2014
New mathematics prizes show the public that the subject is constantly renewing itself with new ideas
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July/August 2014
A new play shows how weather forecasting affected the Normandy landings
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April 2014
An extraordinary cuneiform tablet has provided a mine of information about pre-biblical flood legends
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January/February 2014
The Egyptian astronomer's dubious methods dominated the science for over a millennium
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January/February 2014
This great Danish astronomer made a heliocentric theory credible
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May 2013
After a request to exchange a shopping trolley in Germany was lost in translation, I now know the eurozone must fail
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March 2013
The French polymath Henri Pointcaré excelled in astronomy, physics mathematics and a lot more
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December 2012
Robert Oppenheimer, far from being a one-dimensional Dr Atomic, was a tragic character of huge erudition
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October 2012
If you think that the discovery of the Higgs Boson solved all the mysteries of particle physics, think again
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July/August 2012
Einstein's biggest breakthroughs came after he had made an effort to learn from his earlier mistakes
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May 2012
Will today’s scientists hunting the Higgs boson prove as ingenious as the ancient Mesopotamians?
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April 2012
As publishers charge more for journals, academics are beginning to feel short-changed.
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November 2011
Minkowski enabled Einstein to supersede Newton. Today’s scientists must emulate them
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September 2011
Angela Merkel and Jean-Claude Trichet recently attended a premiere of Tannhauser in Bayreuth but their own lives are more like an operatic melodrama
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July/August 2011
Little is known about Euclid the man, but his cathedral of mathematical reasoning endures
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January/February 2011
Ludicrous red-tape is stifling innovation and inspiration in Universities. Administrators must step aside
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September 2010
The Bletchley Park cryptographers were a rum bunch. Their successors are keeping up the good work
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May 2010
The dearth of GCSE Greek courses — or indeed, Ancient Greek history — taught in state schools is to the great detriment of secondary school pupils
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April 2010
The government's insistence on incessant testing leaves pupils arithmetically substandard
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January/February 2010
When politics has entered the scientific debate over climate change, how can we trust the experts?
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December 2009
Government plans to allocate scientific research funding according to "economic and social impact" will stifle creativity and prevent basic advances
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October 2009
The shapes and patterns of Nature have some surprising explanations
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June 2009
Ronald Harwood's plays tackle the thorny issue of great artists accused of collaborating with the Nazis
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April 2009
British universities need to become more like America’s if they want to keep the best scientists
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December 2008
100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know by John D. Barrow
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November 2008
Every pupil should have the chance to learn from the neglected father of geometry
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About Mark Ronan
Mark Ronan is Honorary Professor of Mathematics at University College, London, Emeritus Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and author of Symmetry and the Monster: One of the Greatest Quests of Mathematics. He also runs an on-line review site for opera, ballet and theatre. See it here.
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