mathematics

Laila Soueif

Laila Soueif is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Laila Soueif rather than just read about it. In short: Laila Soueif (Arabic: ليلى سويف; born 1956) is an Egyptian-British human and women's rights activist and a professor of mathematics at Cairo University. She is the widow of Ahmed Seif El-Islam, and she is mother of activists: Alaa Abd El-Fattah, Sanaa Seif, and Mona Seif.

Key takeaways

Laila Soueif belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Laila Soueif to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Laila Soueif from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Laila Soueif (Arabic: ليلى سويف; born 1956) is an Egyptian-British human and women's rights activist and a professor of mathematics at Cairo University. She is the widow of Ahmed Seif El-Islam, and she is mother of activists: Alaa Abd El-Fattah, Sanaa Seif, and Mona Seif. Her sister is the novelist Ahdaf Soueif.

Early life and education Laila Soueif was born in London, England, in 1956, the daughter of a university professors. She went to her first political protest in 1972 in Cairo's Tahrir Square, when she was just 16. Two hours later her parents tracked her down and brought her home, and she has said: "From that, I learned that it was easier to defy the state than to defy my parents." Soueif studied mathematics at Cairo University in the mid-1970s.

Career As of 2014, Soueif was a professor of mathematics at Cairo University. She is the founder of the 9 March Professors' Movement for Universities Independence.

Activism In June 2014, Soueif's son, blogger and dissident Alaa Abd El-Fattah, along with 24 others, was sentenced in absentia to 5 years imprisonment, on counts of violating the new Protest Law. In October 2014, the Cairo Criminal Court sentenced her daughter Sanaa Seif and 22 others to three years in prison on similar charges. In early September 2014, Soueif and her daughter Mona Seif embarked on a hunger strike in protest against the imprisonment of Abd El-Fattah and Sanaa Seif. On 19 November, Soueif and Mona Seif ended their 76-day hunger strike.

Hunger strike demanding the release of her son In December 2021, Abd El-Fattah was sent to prison in Egypt for spreading "false news undermining national security". On 30 September 2024, after Egyptian authorities did not release her son at the end of his sentence on 29 September 2024, but instead pushed the release date to 2027, the 68-year-old Laila went on a hunger strike from the day her son completed his sentence, to demand his release, asking the Egyptian and British governments to respect their own laws and obligations by holding near-weekly protests outside the UK government's Foreign Office in Westminster, calling on the UK government to do more to secure her son's release, chalking on the pavement the number of days of Alaa Abd El-Fattah's illegal imprisonment. She has been surviving on water, rehydration salts, and sugarless tea and coffee, and spends an hour each day outside 10 Downing Street. She was joined in mid-January 2025 by Australian journalist Peter Greste, who had been imprisoned in Egypt's Tora prison with Abd El-Fattah in 2013, for a 21-day hunger strike. As of 26 February 2025, Soueif was warned by her doctor of her life being at high risk if she continued the hunger strike. She was admitted to a hospital in London with dangerously low blood sugar, blood pressure, and sodium levels. Her family urged UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to intervene and secure her son's release. Stopping taking the 300-calorie supplements she had been consuming for three months on a partial hunger, Soueif announced on 20 May that she had resumed her near-total hunger strike and her daily one-hour vigil outside Downing Street urging the UK government to do more to make her son's release a priority in relations with Egypt. In June 2025, it was confirmed that UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer had been attempting to contact Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, but that Sisi had not returned their calls. On 22 September 2025, Abd El-Fattah was freed from prison, having been pardoned along with five other prisoners by President Sisi.

Personal life Soueif met her future husband, Ahmed Seif El-Islam, in the mid-1970s while at Cairo University, where he was already the "leader of an underground communist student cell calling for revolution". They were married until his death in 2014. Owing to her birth in the United Kingdom, Soueif holds both Egyptian and British citizenship. They are the parents of the activists Alaa Abd El-Fattah, Sanaa Seif and Mona Seif. Her sister is the novelist Ahdaf Soueif.

References

External links O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Laila Soueif", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Laila Soueif

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Laila Soueif claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Laila Soueif before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Laila Soueif ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Laila Soueif

In research: Laila Soueif appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Laila Soueif in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Laila Soueif is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1956 births, 20th-century Egyptian mathematicians, 21st-century Egyptian mathematicians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Laila Soueif outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Laila Soueif” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Laila Soueif in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Laila Soueif means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Laila Soueif out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Laila Soueif in simple terms?

Why does Laila Soueif matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Laila Soueif?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Laila Soueif.