Wendy Fortescue-Hubbard, NESTA fellow, teacher, author, poet and inventor was awarded a NESTA fellowship in 2001 to enable her to “reach, teach and inspire the unsuspecting audience through the national media”. Wendy now has a weekly column in the Times Educational Supplement called ‘Mathagony Aunt®’ and presents ‘Mathagony Aunt®’ on Teacher’s TV (www.mathagonyaunt.co.uk) and was the maths expert on living TV’s ‘ESP Challenge’. She is a member of the Royal Institution’s advisory group for mathematics.

Originally trained as a primary school teacher, but taught mathematics in the secondary school and supported dyslexic students in their mathematics whilst she was researching at the University of Plymouth. She ran a maths centre on the high street, which ran maths clubs and maths holidays. Wendy has been a head of mathematics in Devon where she was awarded 5/5 ‘excellents’ for her teaching by OfSTED. Her fellowship has enabled her to develop her skills in the national media, helping to popularise mathematics and make it more accessible to people of all ages.

Wendy writes poems, which often appear in her column to illustrate various mathematics concepts, eight of which are part of an interactive exhibition in the @Bristol science centre and are to be published shortly as a coffee-table book. She toured with the BBC Tomorrow’s World Roadshow for a month with her show ‘Algebra for Science’. Her invention - a game for teaching and assessing multiplication tables, called ‘Perfect Times®’ - also toured with BBC Tomorrow’s World Roadshow as an international Live Lab experiment, which can still be played at www.perfect-times.co.uk (CD-Rom published by Cambridge University Press). The game is also available on Fingabox® (created by Johnnie Doyle), which is a touch screen unit for 3-9 year olds, this is a unit to engage children in public places. She has also written mathematics materials for Nelsonthornes and Philip and Tacey.

She created a set of Action Mats for the RAF maths challenge to illustrate the mathematics used in various careers in the RAF. The Action Mats have toured the country for the past three years, so far reaching over 5000 children.

Wendy runs Mathagony Aunt® maths workshops in Knowle West, Bristol as part of delivering Mathagony Aunt® in Bristol. She also took maths to the coffee area at The Mall in Cribbs Causeway, Bristol as ‘Maths on the Menu’, which had shoppers joining in maths quizzes via voting units in the middle of the shopping mall. She helped people with percentages through to algebra!

All is achieved with the patience and support of her four children, Judy, Emie, James and Tilly and her partner Dr Hugh Beere.