Play the first verse of ‘Stairway to heaven’ backwards and it becomes garbled nonsense. Play it again, having read the following alternative lyrics, and rather disturbingly, the song seems to become a satanic tribute.
“Oh, here’s to my sweet Satan.
The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan.
He will give you, give you 666.
There was a little toolshed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.”
When Simon Singh demonstrated this phenomenon live, he was not (rather unimaginatively in my opinion), trying to convince us to believe that the members of Led Zeppelin sold their souls to the devil in return for musical glory. He was instead trying to convince us that scientific thinking is invaluable for critically examining and navigating a complex world full of weird and wonderful coincidences. And the logical rigour demanded by the sciences isn’t just practically valuable, he argued: it’s actually the most financially rewarding forms of human capital. In a comparison of average salary boosts that different university degrees can lead to, he demonstrated that degrees in medicine, physics, and maths yield over four times the financial reward compared to a humanities degree.
Of course, he is himself a walking proponent of the rewards in store for Bachelor of Sciences. Following an
undergraduate degree in Physics from Imperial College London, and a PhD in Particle Physics from the
University of Cambridge, he has written five books which have all enjoyed enormous popular success.
Throughout the talk he discussed his motivations for writing popular science and gave a brief introduction to each of them. At university, he told us, he realised he wasn’t the right fit for highly academic research - but he had a talent for science communication. He could put the passion and curiosity he had for maths and physics into writing, to instil the same passion into others.
As a keen Simpsons aficionado, Singh devoted an entire book to uncovering the mathematical Easter eggs hidden in the TV programme by their eminently overqualified authors. He showed us Homer exploring Fermat’s last theorem, Lisa reading about Euler’s equations, and even a guest appearance from Simon Singh himself. From the eccentric world of maths in the Simpsons, to the complicated and abstract mathematics of Fermat’s last theorem, Singh’s books explore maths as a creative discipline, as ubiquitous as it is useful.
Directed by Simon Singh, you can watch 'Fermat's Last Theorem'
here on BBC.