Hi, it's Nicola Cochlin. Young people have been making history for years, but we don't often hear about them. My brand new series on BBC Sounds sets out to put this right. In history's youngest heroes, I'll be revealing the fascinating stories of 12 young people who've played a major role in history and who've helped shape our world. Like Audrey Hepburn, Nelson Mandela, Louis Braille and Lady Jane Grey, history's youngest heroes with me, Nicola Cochlin.

Listen on BBC Sounds.

Hello, I'm Krista Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 2008.

My castaway this week is Marcus DeSotoi, a professor of mathematics at Oxford and a fellow of new college.

He has a world-class reputation for his work.

His obsession with his subject then is to be expected.

Less predictable are some of his other passions, playing the trumpet, theatre, Arsenal Football Club, eye-poppingly bright clothes, and surfing. Every seventh wave, he says, is good. He's also a first-rate communicator, popularising mathematics with books and TV programmes, believing he says that once you show people it's not a load of boring multiplication and long division, you can say it has beauty and aesthetics

and excitement and drama and emotion. You had me up until emotion. Where does that come into

mathematics? Well, for me, doing mathematics is a real emotional buzz. That moment when

you've been working on something, you just can't see where it's going, and then suddenly you get

this rush of adrenaline when you see actually how something works out. I mean, it's really that

aha moment. That is a really emotional moment. You must surely be, surely be aware that mathematics for many people at best provokes

disinterest, at worst and open hostility.

It does, but I think that's partly because people don't realize what mathematics is really

about. I mean, I think we're about to hear a lot of music, and I think mathematics and music

have a lot to do with each other. What I feel people think mathematics is is just kind of scales and arpeggios.

And what I was lucky to hear when I was at school was actually the real music of mathematics.

And I think if you open that up to people, suddenly you see the emotional side.

At mentioning school, it was when you were, what, 12 years old and over a cigar that you had your moment of

epiphany yes i wasn't i wasn't smoking the scar no uh yeah what happened at that point i really

...