Dr. Eugenia Cheng's resume is stacked as high as it is versatile. It includes being a concert pianist, WSJ columnist, mathematician, and author.
Her latest book is x+y: A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender and explores what numbers and data can tell us about gender.
In this fascinating episode, Dr. Cheng and Dr. Pam talk about reimagining the ways we think about math, being outnumbered by men in their academic fields, separating the character from gender, and the new terminology she has developed to describe people outside of their gender stereotypes.
A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender
Featuring:
Dr. Eugenia Cheng
Dr. Eugenia Cheng is a mathematician, educator, author, public speaker, columnist, concert pianist, and artist. She is Scientist In Residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She won tenure in Pure Mathematics at the University of Sheffield, UK, and is now an Honorary Visiting Fellow at City, University of London. She has previously taught at the Universities of Cambridge, Chicago, and Nice and holds a Ph.D. in pure mathematics from the University of Cambridge. Alongside her research, in Category Theory and undergraduate teaching, her aim is to rid the world of “math phobia”. Her first popular math book, How to Bake Pi, was published by Profile (UK)/Basic Books (US) in 2015 to widespread acclaim including from the New York Times, National Geographic, Scientific American, and she was interviewed around the world including on the BBC, NPR and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Eugenia was an early pioneer of math on YouTube and her videos have been viewed around 15 million times to date. Her next popular math book, Beyond Infinity was published in 2017 and was shortlisted for the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize 2017, and The Art of Logic was published by Profile and Basic Books in 2018. She also writes the Everyday Math column for the Wall Street Journal and has completed mathematical art commissions for Hotel EMC2, 6018 North, the Lubeznik Center, and the Cultural Center, Chicago. She is the founder of the Liederstube, an intimate oasis for art song based in Chicago. Her next book “x + y: A Mathematician’s Manifesto for Rethinking Gender” is out in 2020 and her first children’s book is on its way.