Ian Stewart (born 1945) is a United Kingdom mathematician and author whose research and writing have connected advanced mathematics with broad public audiences. He is an Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick and a Fellow of the Royal Society. His research has included bifurcation theory, pattern formation, biomathematics, and catastrophe theory.
Alongside specialist research and textbooks, Stewart has written extensively for general readers, using books, articles, lectures, radio, and television to discuss ideas such as symmetry, chaos, and mathematical modelling. His popular works include Does God Play Dice?, Nature’s Numbers, and Letters to a Young Mathematician. He also co-authored science books connected with Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. In 2026, Princeton University Press published Reaching for the Extreme, a book on mathematical problems involving limits, optimisation, and the ways mathematicians formulate questions.
Stewart was elected to the Royal Society in 2001. His public communication of mathematics has been recognised with the Michael Faraday Prize (1995), the Christopher Zeeman Medal (2008), and, jointly with Steven Strogatz, the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science (2015).
This profile is awaiting source review; collected books are already linked below.
