Cambridge's Hannah Fry Wins 2026 Leelavati Prize for Public Maths Outreach

Hannah Fry, Cambridge’s first Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics, has won the Leelavati Prize at the International Congress of Mathematicians. Awarded every four years by the International Mathematical Union and announced at the same event as the Fields Medals, the prize recognizes outstanding work in raising public awareness of mathematics. The citation credits Fry with reaching audiences far beyond the usual science-communication crowd, translating technical ideas into something accessible without stripping out their depth.

Fry has built that reach across books, television, podcasts, and social media, where she has more than two million Instagram followers and a spot on Time’s 2026 list of the 100 most influential digital creators. Her recent honors span both academia and mainstream media: the Royal Society’s David Attenborough Award in 2024, a 2025 Emmy for an episode on quantum computing in The Future with Hannah Fry, and a 2026 Webby for the podcast The Rest is Science. She also works directly with students, from the 2019 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures to recent communication workshops for Cambridge undergraduates.

Fry frames her approach around motivation rather than raw ability, arguing that the real barrier to understanding maths is whether people are made to care. Her stated method is to open a gap in the audience’s curiosity, then fill it, an approach her department head says matters more than ever given how thoroughly mathematics underpins modern life.