FOUR ONE SIX

This post appeared on Lecta for Ada Lovelace Day 2011 and is an expanded version of a post at Geek Feminism last year.

“Don’t be intimidated!… I have seen many people get discouraged because they see mathematics as full of deep incomprehensible theories. There is no reason to feel that way. In mathematics whatever you learn is yours and you build it up—one step at a time. It’s not like a real time game of winning and losing. You win if you are benefited from the power, rigor and beauty of mathematics. It is a big win if you discover a new principle or solve a tough problem.

Fan Chung

Fan Chung is a leading mathematician, specialising in combinatorics and later graph theory. She is Distinguished Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at UC San Diego.

I first heard of Chung in Paul Hoffman’s The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth; Chung and her husband Ron Graham were two of Erdős’s closest collaborators. Hoffman tells a great story about how when Chung had finished, and come first in, her PhD qualifying exams at the University of Pennsylvania, her eventual PhD advisor Herbert Wilf gave her a textbook on Ramsey theory to browse and she came back and explained that she’d improved one of the proofs. That was a core part of her PhD dissertation, completed in a week. Those kinds of stories are told about the best mathematicians.

Chung has worked both in academia and in industry, having spent twenty years at Bell Labs and Bellcore in both information technology and mathematics before returning to the University of Pennsylvania, where she did her doctorate. After her time in industry she is deeply concerned with mathematical breadth, and is known for her “nose” for problems that cross several subfields.

Many mathematicians would hate to marry someone in the profession. They fear their relationship would be too competitive. In our case, not only are we both mathematicians, we both do work in the same areas. So we can understand and appreciate what the other is working on, and we can work on things together-and sometimes make good progress.

Fan Chung, describing her relationship with husband Ron Graham

If my count is right, Chung’s publication list shows 79 papers co-authored with Ron Graham. I’ve always admired stories of professionally companionate marrages: even Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne can’t compete on those numbers.

Chung’s website has a copy of a chapter about her in Claudia Henrion’s Women in mathematics: the addition of difference. Among other things it talks about her move to the United States from Taiwan for her graduate work, and her thoughts on having a child while at graduate school.

[Graduate school] is a wonderful time to have a child. You don’t have to attend classes; you only have to write your thesis.

Fan Chung

Hrm, yes, well. Perhaps I will give that advice in 20 years time. Perhaps not…

References

• UC San Diego: Fan Chung’s home page
• Wikipedia: Fan Chung
• Don Albers, Making Connections: A Profile of Fan Chung
• J J O’Connor and E F Robertson, Fan Rong K Chung Graham

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Want to highlight a geek woman? Submissions are currently open for Wednesday Geek Woman posts.

man-themed:

Trans*, Gender/queer, Gender Variant, Questioning -and generally all around not cis- Sci-Fi Zine Callout

calling all: alien creatures, animorphs, astrologists, bitchy witches, celestial beings, clairvoyants, closet monsters, comix nerds, cyberpunx, cyborg feminists, deep sea divers, discordians, dungeon masters, dystopian sluts, elves & fairies, evil robots, extremophiles, genderqueer cans o’beans, glam goths, glamarchists, griminals, hackers, horror fiends, intergalactic babestars, kids who read about inanimate objects coming to life, techies, Linux geeks, mad scientists, pervy bookworms, post-apocalyptic prophets, sexy clones, stargazers, steampunks, superqueerdos, Tralfamadorians, Trekkies, wizards, wizard’s apprentices, vampire slayers, vamp tramps, superqueerdos, vengeful librarians, zombie survivalists, 1-800-psychics, and lovely so-ons… ***who aren’t cis***

We’re hoping to compile a rag tag collection of short sci-fi/horror/fantasy stories written by trans*, gender/queer, gender variant, questioning, or otherwise fabulous peeps. For the first volume, we’re hoping folks will consider, for your writing pleasure, the vague theme of ‘Solution-Oriented Dystopia’ and anything that may encompass.

After many (encrypted web-based) chatz we got to talking about the ways in which non-cis folk often gravitate towards each other to discuss our experiences living in a cis-centric world, and the ways we move through those worlds. These conversations often include talking about hard shit, sharing coping mechanisms, and plotting to tear down and piss glitter on the ruins of the realities that bring violence against us. and also, we talked a lot about sci-fi.

oppressive language gets put on us by so-called experts who feel entitled to narrate our lives and dictate what our bodies should or shouldn’t look like. our stories get spelled out to us by ‘professionals’ and/or any jerk who wants to tell some stupid joke. so we wanna reclaim ourselves and narratives through sci-fi. we wanna create fictions that could become realities, in some other quantum reality in the not-so-distant future/past/present.

we chose the theme of Solution-Oriented Dystopia because we want to talk about the terrible shit that happens to us and our loved ones by way of creative processes. We don’t wanna gloss over those things, because silence = death. our silence does anything but protect us, and for that reason we would rather obscure cis-centric worlds than pretend they don’t exist.

we think that writing is an escape hatch, an ejection seat out of the cis-centric death machine on a collision course to monotony. it’s an opportunity to not just work through, but speak out against, the ways in which the world fucks with us on a daily basis - and be fabulously geekxcore sassy while doing so.

deadline for submissions: february 2, the day of satanic revels

submission guidelines:

-no poetry (we love you… but…)-The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Award guidelines state that a short story is anything under 7,499 words. But… seriously. In keeping with the on-going life theme of railing against everything, we’re hoping you stick to between 1,500 - 2,000 words long (shorter is okay too)-grammar and capitalization is whatever.
-send in .doc, .odt-justified margins

send submissions to: sciencefagz@gmail.com (sciencefaggots was already taken!!!!!!!!)