Mark Ronan
Mark Ronan

Professor of Mathematics. Author of Symmetry and the Monster — a popular account of one of the great quests in mathematics. Specialist in Mesopotamian history and literature. Cold-water swimmer. Opera reviewer who once served on the Olivier Awards Committee.

Latest Theatre Reviews

Angel’s Bone, English National Opera, October 2026

October 17, 2026

Musically interesting, but rather too intense even if only for 1 hour 20 minutes. That’s the length of this short opera, which lacks light and shade, while hysteria and brutality are there throughout. The staging with its multiple camera angles is disorientating, but that is part of the point from the point of view of …

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Parsifal, Royal Opera, October 2026

October 3, 2026

Vociferous boos greeted the production team at the end. The likely reason was that Parsifal had just stabbed Amfortas to death with the sacred spear, though they might also have objected to the Valkyrie-like representation of the Flower Maidens. But under the baton of Jakub Hruša this was musically sublime — see my review in …

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Dorset Opera: L’elisir d’amore and Samson et Delilah

July 26, 2026

Dorset Opera stage their productions in the excellent auditorium at Bryanston School, and this year saw two: Donizetti’s delightful comedy L’elisir d’amore (The Elixir of Love); and Saint-Saëns’ hugely dramatic Samson et Delila. This latter one was more enjoyable than the recent staging of the same opera at Covent Garden — see my reviews of …

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Ariadne auf Naxos, Glyndebourne, July 2026

July 21, 2026

Some people I’ve met consider Ariadne auf Naxos the greatest of Strauss’s operas, and this new Glyndebourne production did it full justice. Wonderful singing from all three female leads, particularly that of the earnest young composer, and a joyful sounding Bacchus — see my review in The Article.

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Buxton Festival 2026

July 17, 2026

The first three days of the Buxton featured three very different operas: Franz Lehar’s Merry Widow on the opening night, followed by Verdi’s La Traviata and Handel’s Amadigi di Gaula. Each in its own way typifying three time periods, but the main attraction for me was the appearance of Polish-American coloratura soprano Alexandra Nowakowski as …

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Rheingold, Grange Park Opera, July 2026

July 8, 2026

Wagner’s Ring is well suited to summer music festivals, and Grange Park Opera in Surrey have now begun their own cycle this summer with a very effective Rheingold. The representation of the gods in costumes from the Classical world is arguably the best I’ve seen, and the conducting was excellent — see my review in …

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Latest Journalism

The brilliance of Babylonian Mathematics

The achievements of Babylonian mathematics are still poorly recognised, but the people in ancient Iraq treated numbers in the abstract way we do today, rather than as lengths, areas or volumes. This began before 2000 BC, and enabled them to develop mathematical formulas in the modern sense. In particular they not only knew what we call Pythagoras’s theorem but had a formula for producing side lengths for right-angled triangles, something the Greeks could not do well over a millennium and a half later. See my article in Engelsberg Ideas.

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How modern Numbers came to Europe

Our modern representation of numbers is the result of a complex process that can be traced back to the ancient Near East, via India and the Arab world — see my article in Engelsberg Ideas.

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The Pythagoras Myth

Contrary to popular belief, Pythagoras was by no means the discoverer of his eponymous theorem – it had already been known for over a thousand years. In popular perception however he became the source of the famous theorem about right-angled triangles: The Square on the Hypotenuse is equal to the Sum of the Squares on the Other Two Sides, a great result – serious mathematics indeed. But it has little to do with Pythagoras — see my article in Engelsberg Ideas.

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Feature

Symmetry and the Monster is the story of a mathematical quest that began two hundred years ago in revolutionary France, led to the biggest collaboration ever between mathematicians across the world, and revealed the ‘Monster’ – not monstrous at all, but a structure of exquisite beauty and complexity.

This book tells for the first time the fascinating story of the biggest theorem ever to have been proved. Mark Ronan graphically describes not only the last few decades of the chase, but also some of the more interesting byways, including my personal favourite, the one I called “Monstrous Moonshine”.

John H. Conway, von Neumann Chair of Mathematics, Princeton University

Opera on 3: for the BBC Radio 3 broadcast (on 19 November 2016) of Parsifal from this summer’s Bayreuth Festival, I was the guest with presenter Christopher Cook. We discussed the opera and its production, which I reviewed for the Daily Telegraph on 27 July 2016.

Truth and Beauty: The Hidden World of Symmetry

On the face of it, symmetry may seem simple, but diving beneath the surface reveals a whole new world. Over the last 100 years, the mathematical idea of symmetry has proved to be a guiding light for the world of physics. But what does a mathematician mean by symmetry? How does this link in with the world around us? And could it be the key to the mysterious ‘Theory of Everything’?

This was a BBC Radio programme on Symmetry in the Naked Scientists series. Here is the link