News from the world of maths: Sexy maths

Hollywood has finally figured out what Plus has known for a long time: that maths is sexy.

Actor John Hurt believes maths has become "sexy". Hurt stars as a maths professor in the new film The Oxford Murders. In the film, Hurt and a graduate student played by Elijah Wood discover a series of murders linked by mathematical symbols.

Maths in the movies is not a new phenomena, with such films as Pi, Cube and A Beautiful Mind featuring mathematical concepts or mathematicians as characters. More recent films include this year's 21, in which Kevin Spacey plays a mathematics professor.

Hurt told the BBC World Service that: "I think there is something that has brought maths to the fore. I think probably because we live in a world with so many lies, and so much lack of truth, that it has become quite sexy to think of the one thing we have which is the only language that is truthful. There's no way of disproving that two plus two equals four, and therefore, take that to the ultimate, much more complicated areas, and you're dealing with something which is truthful."

You can read more about maths in the movies in the Plus articles:

• Maths in the movies,
• Maths goes to the movies,
• Flatland: the movie,
• and stayed tuned to Plus, as the next issue will contain reviews of many mathematical films, as well as a podcast from the Maths Film Festival at the recent Edinburgh International Science Festival.