{"id":3502,"date":"2018-03-22T19:50:23","date_gmt":"2018-03-22T23:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/?p=3502"},"modified":"2018-03-22T19:50:23","modified_gmt":"2018-03-22T23:50:23","slug":"genius-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/2018\/03\/22\/genius-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"Genius Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three years ago, I wrote two posts (post 1<\/span><\/a>, post 2<\/span><\/a>) about math, the media, and the genius myth, the idea that in order to be successful in math, you have to be born with some particular talent. They\u2019re good posts, if I do say so myself, and as math hasn\u2019t rid itself of the genius narrative in the intervening years, they\u2019re still relevant.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

“The Inspiration of Genius” by Jules-Cl\u00e9ment Chaplain. Credit: Public domain, via the Metropolitan Museum of Art<\/p><\/div>\n

I have been thinking about the genius myth recently because of some posts I\u2019ve read about genius and identity in the math blogosphere. Most recently, Jim Propp\u2019s post \u201cGenius Box<\/span><\/a>\u201d talks about the complicated relationship he has had with the concept of genius in mathematics. Another post I’ve been thinking about this this one\u00a0from Piper Harron about her objections to being labeled as a genius<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Something I have been seeing more and more in writing about the idea of genius and in neighboring discussions such as #MeToo<\/span><\/a> is an acknowledgment that it\u2019s easy to focus on the art, math, or science created by those who were able to thrive in an environment and worry that changing practices would deprive us of those things, but it\u2019s impossible to see the art, math, or science that would have been created by the people who were pushed out of the field. That is something that I wrestle with when I read about early women and members of other groups that are underrepresented in math and which I tried to flesh out in a post last year about Sophie Germain<\/span><\/a>. And of course, our loss of the products people would have created is not the chief wrong in this situation, and thinking that way risks commodifying other people. People who wanted to be mathematicians but were pushed out were deprived of the opportunity to do activities they wanted to do and thrive in a way that they were interested in thriving.<\/span><\/p>\n

Along with the genius myth, I have been thinking about the idea of identity in math and identities as mathematicians. Last fall, UK math(s) teacher Ed Southall, author of the blog Solve My Maths<\/span><\/a>, wrote about his struggle labeling himself as a mathematician<\/span><\/a>. The word has baggage related to genius, speed, and tricks that made him hesitant about whether he should call himself a mathematician. I have seen this same question come up on Twitter, recently from Kate Owens<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

In departmental orientation in graduate school, the then chair of the department (who later became my advisor) told us all, \u201cYou are mathematicians.\u201d We were paid to think about and tell people about math; therefore, we were mathematicians. Today I would probably not center the role of money; the facts that we were choosing to spend our time thinking about math and had been accepted into a program where we would be trained as mathematicians and teach math to others were the salient points. Regardless, my advisor\u2019s framing of me, a naive first-year graduate student, as a mathematician helped me view myself that way. I won\u2019t claim I never struggled to see myself in academic math research (and I eventually stopped doing academic math research), but I did not worry that I was misusing the word mathematician by calling myself one.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another interesting post about mathematical identity from Piper Harron asks whether we can improve the way we tell undergraduates what it is their math professors really do<\/span><\/a>. Too many students don\u2019t consider a math major because they don\u2019t want to be primarily calculus teachers. Can we tell stories about people\u2019s different paths into math and mathematical careers that will broaden students\u2019 conceptions of who does math and what mathematicians do?<\/span><\/p>\n

How do you think about genius and identity in mathematics?<\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three years ago, I wrote two posts (post 1, post 2) about math, the media, and the genius myth, the idea that in order to be successful in math, you have to be born with some particular talent. They\u2019re good … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[361,360],"class_list":["post-3502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people-in-math","tag-genius","tag-genius-myth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3tW3N-Uu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3502"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3505,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3502\/revisions\/3505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}