My father, Brian Rotman, who has died aged 87, was a mathematician, semiotician and occasional playwright.
He helped shape how we think of mathematics as a cultural system, authoring seven books between 1966 and 2008. Signifying Nothing (1987) offered a fresh view of zero, showing how “nothing” reveals human knowledge structures, while Ad Infinitum … The Ghost in Turing’s Machine (1993) argued that symbols and absences function more like ghosts than concrete entities.
He was also a cultural theorist known for his explorations of how inscriptions and bodily gestures influence human thought. A prescient work, Becoming Beside Ourselves (2008), explored how digital media transforms the self into a plural, connected “I”.
Born into a Jewish family in the East End of London, he was the son of Bessie (nee Roberts) and Joseph Rotman, who ran a convenience store on the ground floor of their home in Brick Lane.
Attending Central Foundation boys’ school in Shoreditch, Brian was the first in his family to finish secondary education, let alone university. He gained his undergraduate degree in maths at the University of Nottingham in 1959, then taught mathematics at Sir John Cass College (now London Metropolitan University) while gaining his master’s at the University of London.
While working on his PhD in mathematics, which he received from the University of London in 1967, he became a lecturer at Bristol University’s mathematics department, where he stayed for two decades. In 1978 he married Lesley Ferris, an American theatre director and scholar, and they had two children, my sister, Phoebe, and me.
In the early 1980s, Brian and Lesley ran the Mouth and Trousers theatre company at the York and Albany pub in Camden. Brian wrote plays and built the stage, while Lesley directed. A later play by Brian, A Land Without People, was performed at the Courtyard theatre in London in 2015.
In 1990, the family migrated to Memphis, Tennessee, where Brian became an independent scholar, including as a fellow at Stanford University. In 1996, he became a professor at Louisiana State University’s interdisciplinary studies department; two years later, he joined the comparative studies department at Ohio State University. He published more than 30 academic articles and gave lectures across the US including at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Duke and Berkeley universities.
Witty, intelligent and compassionate, he drew talented graduate students, some of whom became close friends. Colleagues remember him as a shrewd observer who enjoyed discussing politics or philosophy. Soon after my parents returned to London in 2021, Brian was diagnosed with end-stage kidney disease.
He is survived by Lesley, Phoebe and me, by three grandchildren, Froy, Kolo and Zemi, and by his sister, Helen.
