March 18, 2026
Nick Hamshaw, Headmaster of 1729 Maths School, reflects on mathematics, collaboration and the vision for the school.
There is a persistent myth about mathematics. Many imagine the mathematician as a solitary figure: a lone genius at a blackboard producing brilliant ideas in isolation. Occasionally that happens, but historically some of the greatest advances in mathematics have emerged not from isolation but from collaboration within intellectual communities. One famous example is the partnership between G. H. Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan. In 1913 Hardy received a letter from Ramanujan, then an unknown clerk in Madras, filled with extraordinary number theory. Hardy recognised the genius. When Ramanujan came to Cambridge, Hardy helped place his insights within rigorous mathematical frameworks while Ramanujan’s intuition opened entirely new directions in analytic number theory. Their collaboration produced mathematics neither could have created alone.
A very different model was embodied by the highly prolific Paul Erdős, who travelled from one university to another with a collection of open problems. He worked intensively with colleagues for a few days then moved on. Over time he wrote papers with more than 500 collaborators creating the vast collaborative network reflected in the famous idea of the Erdős number.
Whole movements in mathematics have grown from sustained collective work. In the 1930s French mathematicians including André Weil, Henri Cartan and Jean Dieudonné met regularly to rethink the foundations of the subject. Publishing under the pseudonym Nicolas Bourbaki, they rebuilt much of modern mathematics around the concept of structure.
Even achievements that appear solitary may rest on decades of shared ideas. Andrew Wiles’s proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem depended on the theory of elliptic curves and modular forms developed by many mathematicians. When Wiles encountered a critical obstacle, it was through collaboration with Richard Taylor that the final gap was closed.
Mathematics has always been a conversation. Ideas are proposed, tested, refined, challenged and rebuilt. This is why mathematicians have always gravitated towards places where those conversations can happen continuously. The Mathematical Tripos in nineteenth-century Cambridge created a culture in which students pushed one another to extraordinary levels. In the twentieth century, institutes such as the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton became global hubs for mathematical exchange.
Yet many mathematically curious children grow up without that kind of community around them. Eventually they may find one another online but that isn't guaranteed and the approach can be hard to maintain safely.
One of the ambitions behind 1729 Maths School is to create exactly the community these children need.
When like-minded people gather something remarkable happens. Ideas move faster. Questions deepen. Ambition grows. Our aim at 1729 is simply to give the next generation of mathematicians the chance to find their people.