Professor Wilson is a son of former British Prime Minister
Harold Wilson and his wife,
Mary.
Early life and education
Wilson was born in 1943 to the politician
Harold Wilson, who later became
Prime Minister, and his wife the poet
Mary Wilson (
née Baldwin). He has a younger brother, Giles, who in his 50s gave up a career as a teacher to be a train driver.[5] Wilson attended
University College School in
Hampstead, North London. He achieved a
BA First Class Honours in Mathematics from
Balliol College,
Oxford, an
MA from the
University of Pennsylvania, and a PhD from the
University of Pennsylvania (1965–1968). In a
Guardian interview in 2008, Wilson spoke of the fact he grew up known to everyone primarily as a son of the
Labour Partyleader and Prime Minister Harold Wilson: "I hated the attention and I still dislike being introduced as Harold Wilson's son. I feel uncomfortable talking about it to strangers even now."[6]
Mathematics career
Wilson's academic interests lie in
graph theory, particularly in
colouring problems, e.g. the
four colour problem, and algebraic properties of graphs. He also researches the
history of mathematics, particularly British mathematics and mathematics in the 17th century and the period 1860 to 1940, and the history of graph theory and
combinatorics.
He has strong interests in music, including the operas of
Gilbert and Sullivan, and is the co-author (with
Frederic Lloyd) of Gilbert and Sullivan: The Official D'Oyly Carte Picture History.[13] In 2007, he was a guest on Private Passions, the biographical music discussion programme on
BBC Radio 3.[14]
Sherlock Holmes in Babylon and Other Tales of Mathematical History (co-edited with Marlow Anderson and
Victor J. Katz), The Mathematical Association of America, 2004:
ISBN0-88385-546-1
Mathematics and Music: From Pythagoras to Fractals (co-edited with John Fauvel &
Raymond Flood), Oxford University Press, 2003:
ISBN0-19-851187-6
Four Colours Suffice: How the Map Problem Was Solved, Allen Lane (Penguin), 2002:
ISBN0-7139-9670-6