Möbius Maths Hub is part of a national collaborative network of 40 Maths Hubs that are funded by the Department for Education and coordinated by the National Centre of Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM).

We are based in our lead school, The Willink, in West Berkshire and our core purpose is to to develop and spread excellent practice to help schools and colleges lead improvement in maths education in England - for the benefit of all learners. 

 The Möbius strip, also known as a Möbius loop,  is a simple object with a profound idea behind it. Discovered independently in 1858 by German mathematicians August Ferdinand Möbius and Johann Benedict Listing, it is created by taking a strip of paper, giving it a half-twist and joining the ends together. The result is a surface with only one side and one edge — something that defies our everyday intuition.

What inspired the Möbius strip wasn’t art or symbolism, but pure curiosity: a desire to understand the nature of space, surfaces and dimensions.

At its heart, the Möbius strip reminds us that learning is not linear. There is no clear “start” or “finish,” no sharp divide between knowing and not knowing. Instead, understanding deepens as we revisit ideas from new perspectives, discovering that mistakes, questions and insights are all part of the same journey.

This is why the Möbius strip speaks so strongly to teaching and inspiring mathematics. Maths isn’t about memorising steps or racing toward answers; it’s about exploration, creativity and seeing familiar ideas in unfamiliar ways. Just like the Möbius strip challenges our assumptions about sides and edges, great maths teaching challenges learners to think differently, to be curious and to embrace complexity with confidence.