Tom Stoppard 1937-2025

 
The playwright Tom Stoppard passed away at the age of 88 on Nov. 29, 2025.

ONE) He wrote many plays and some movies.  Below I highlight his works whose themes I think will be of interest to my readers (Or at least to me—your mileage may vary.)

1) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1966)

This is Hamlet told from the point of view of two minor characters who, in Shakespeare’s original, can best be described as plot furniture.

The play begins with, R and G are flipping coins. R bets heads ninety-two times in a row and wins each one. The play explores determinism and free will, as well as the mathematical question: At what point should you stop flipping coins and go buy a lottery ticket?

There is also a movie for this one. I think this is better as a play. 

2) Jumpers (1972)

A play about academic philosophers—so naturally it includes gymnastics, both literal and intellectual. There’s also a murder mystery, discussions of God, and enough moral philosophy to power an entire semester of office-hour arguments.

3) Travesties (1974) 

This play Imagines that Vladmir Lenin, James Joyce, and Tristan Tzara (a Dadaist poet, see here for the Dada Art Movement) met in England. They actually were in England at the same time, but the events are narrated by an unreliable octogenarian, so accuracy is...doubtful.

Literature, politics, and art are explored, often simultaneously.

4) Arcadia (1993)

The Stoppard play with the most math—a sentence that delights mathematicians and terrifies theater majors.

It takes place in two time periods: 1809 and 1993.

In 1809, a 13-year-old girl named Thomasina Coverly is (i) trying to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem and (ii) inventing chaos theory by stirring pudding. (This is the only known instance of dessert contributing to mathematics other than pie and muffins.)

In 1993, a historian is working on a theory about Lord Byron, which is only slightly less complicated than Fermat's Last Theorem.

Themes: math, determinism, academia, and the strong correlation between intellectual brilliance and household messes.

Note that this was written a year before FLT was proved. If it had come out a year after FLT was proved this would not change anything since (i) Thomasina Coverly is working in 1809, and (ii) FLT was still a well-known problem when the play came out. If the play had come out in 2025, then this might be a problem since FLT is not nearly as well-known as it was in 1993. 

Some say that FLT being proved was bad for math since it was 

(a) understandable to the non mathematician, 

(b) had prize money attached to it, 

(c) had the wonderful margin story, and 

(d) was open for many years.

(e) there are many poems about it, see here, which is a consequence of a,b,c,d. They were written without ChatGPT.   This criteria is no longer important since ChatGPT allows you to write poems about any math problem you want. I blogged on that here.

 I don't think anything has come close to replacing FLT.

 P vs NP: (a)-it's hard to get across to non-math people what a problem is , (b)-I think it's well known but perhaps I wouldn't know since the non-math people I hang out with know about it from me, (c)-no, (d)-no (hmm- is 50+years a long time?) (e)

Goldbach's conjecture has (a) and (d). As for (b): at one time there was a million dollar prize for solving it, see here, as a way to promote the book Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture but I think the prize expired. The link to find out the contest rules just points to that book companies website. In any case, this prize was not that well known.

While I would not expect a problem to have (c), does any open problem have (a), (b), some story like (c), and (d)? I doubt it.

5) Enigma (2001)

A fictional film about cracking the Enigma code.

Despite expectations, Alan Turing does not appear, nor is he even mentioned. This confused me, since Andrew Hodges's 1983 biography is titled Alan Turing: The Enigma (See here) which was the inspiration for the movie The Imitation Game.

Note that Enigma-the-movie has zero real people, but Travesties-the-play has three real people.

TWO) The Tom Stoppard Prize

The Tom Stoppard Prize was established in 1983 and first awarded in 1984. It is given annually for:
 

outstanding primarily non-fiction work by a writer of Czech origin.

This raises a question: Which is the greater honor—winning an award, or having one named after you while you’re still alive? The answer probably depends on both the award you receive and the award named after you.

In computer science, the only award I know named after a living person is the Knuth Prize. If there are others, leave a comment.

If you ever get this trivia question: 

What do Tom Stoppard and Donald Knuth have in common?

you now know the answer: They were both famous enough to be turned into prizes while they could still appreciate it.