Bryn Mawr and the Public Series - Susan D'Agostino

The Bryn Mawr and the Public Reading Series is proud to host Inside Higher Ed columnist and author Susan D'Agostino for a public reading and discussion. All are welcome!

Susan D'Agostino is a mathematician and writer whose stories have published in The Atlantic, BBC, Scientific American, Wired, Quanta, Washington Post, LA Times, and other leading publications. Her book, How to Free Your Inner Mathematician (Oxford University Press, 2020), won the Mathematical Association of America’s Euler Book Prize. She is a columnist at Inside Higher Ed, where she writes The Public Scholar. Her next book, How Math Will Save Your Life, will be published by W.W. Norton.

"How to Free Your Inner Mathematician"

Mathematical success is not about innate aptitude; it’s about curiosity and drive. The best math stories, like the best math teaching, artfully balance technical details with engaging narratives to make the math accessible and compelling. Mathematician writers accomplish this by introducing memorable characters, ensuring dramatic tension, and offering inviting sketches. In this reading, attendees will hear some of the dozens of stories—complete with pictures—included in the speaker’s book, How to Free Your Inner Mathematician: Notes on Mathematics and Life (Oxford University Press, March 2020). These tales weave math content with lessons for mathematical success. Come prepared to hear about: Archimedes’ pursuits, the Pigeonhole Principle, Fermat’s Last Theorem, Penrose patterns, and bacteriophages with icosahedral symmetry. You’ll leave with lessons on how to: Embrace change, proceed at your own pace, resist comparison, fail more often, look for beauty, and define success for yourself. Join us to be reassured that success in math and life has everything to do with curiosity and drive and less to do with innate ability.