The 80th birthday on 22nd April, 2009, of Sir Michael Atiyah was celebrated with the Atiyah80: Geometry and Physics conference organised by ICMS at the Informatics Forum of the University of Edinburgh and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, April 20–22, and a sequence of events Science, Politics and Drama at the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Lyceum Theatre, April 23–24 2009.

Fionna created a set of drawings at the Atiyah80 conference, you can see the full set at the Atiyah80 website.

These sketches led to commission of Sir Michael Atiyah and Professor Friedrich Hirzebruch, two double portraits one is in University of Edinburgh and other Max Planck Institute of Mathematics Bonn. Drawn in Bonn and Edinburgh, 2011