Professor Sarah Hart

Sarah Hart is a Fellow of Gresham College. She was Gresham Professor of Geometry from 2020-24, the first woman to hold this chair since its creation in 1597. She was also Gresham’s Acting Provost between March and December 2025. She is Professor Emerita of Mathematics at Birkbeck, University of London and was elected as a Fellow of Birkbeck in 2024.

Professor Hart studied at Oxford and Manchester, gaining her PhD in 2000. Postdoctoral research and teaching followed and she was appointed to a lectureship at Birkbeck in 2004. Her academic publications have been mainly in the area of pure mathematics known as group theory, which can be thought of as the mathematical study of symmetry. She became Professor of Mathematics at Birkbeck 2013, and served in various management roles including as Programme Director, Assistant Dean, and Head of Economics, Mathematics and Statistics. She served as President of the British Society for the History of Mathematics (BSHM) for three years from 2021-2023, and President of the Association of Mathematics in Education (AMiE) for 2026-7.

Professor Hart is passionate about communicating mathematics and is a sought-after public speaker. She is particularly interested in the links between mathematics, culture and creativity: many of her public lectures and media appearances relate to these topics. Her first book, Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature, was published in 2023. It was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, has been translated into multiple languages, and won the Mathematical Association of America’s Euler book prize. Her next book, exploring the connections between mathematics and music, is published in 2027.