I have noticed how things have changed at dinner parties. Twenty years ago, if people found out I was a mathematician, they would say, 'Ooh, I was never any good at maths at school'. Now start talking to me about fractals. People have got used to the occasional bit of maths cropping up here and there. It amused me to see in the newspaper a formula for dunking biscuits, because it was on a news page and not on the science page.
People realise that mathematics is actually quite a respectable human activity.
In fact, Stewart is in so much demand as a public speaker that Warwick University has released him from his undergraduate teaching commitments to continue his media work. Numbers are not just proving popular for bedtime readers. The number of teenagers opting to read mathematics at university is also rising. I think we are moving into a golden age. That is making the few at the top of the profession extremely covetable.