"So what are you going to do with that? Teach?" Every math major has been asked this question, possibly hundreds of times. The average person, regardless of nationality, seems to have a limited conception of the capacities of mathematics and relate to it only through the classes they took in secondary schooling.
While doing research for a presentation I made at work about mathematics, I decided to compile a list of successful people who majored in mathematics. There are plenty of adept individuals who get Ph.D.'s in mathematics and contribute to the academic field. A handful of these become famous outside their field into popular culture, and by a handful I mean John Nash. But there are many individuals, also adept in their own ways, who study mathematics and then pursue careers outside the traditional math arenas. As one such individual, I've collected stories over the years of other like-minded examples to potentially serve as training data for my career model (woh Cal, slow your stat analogies). There's this list out there, but its outdated, overly finite and generally not that good: http://www.math.uh.edu/~tomforde/famous.html
So I made my own. I hope you appreciate the range (and domain) of this list.
Sergey Brin
I would say there are three other fields where people traditionally double major in mathematics. Computer Science is the first one. Brin was born in Moscow in a family of Russian Jewish academics - in fact his dad was a math professor. They immigrated to Maryland and his dad taught at College Park. There Sergey would double major and then go on to graduate school at Stanford, where he met Larry Page. The rest is history, and if you don't know about it, you should Google it.
Steven Chu
The next field in which people often couple their degree with math is physics. Steven Chu got his double degree at the University of Rochester followed by a Ph.D. in physics at UC Berkeley. He won a Nobel Prize in Physics while at Bell Labs doing laser cooling work. He then later served on Obama's Cabinet as the Secretary of Energy. He's arguably had one of the more notable and important careers of any Asian-American, and is a very prominent campaigner for a sustainable society.
Peter Diamond
The third field would be economics. This should be no surprise to people familiar with this field. High level economics nowadays involves very serious theoretical math with theories all backed up by axiomatic proofs. Digging through lists of notable economists, I was able to find several with undergraduate degrees in math, but I actually honestly don't recognize any of them. I'm sure Ben Bernanke and Paul Krugman and such know their set theory, but they just happen to have stuck to economic degrees. I chose Peter Diamond (math bachelor's at Yale, Ph.D. economics at MIT) for his Nobel Prize in 2010 in something related to the job market and unemployment. He has a long career in social security research.
David Robinson
Now we get to a list of more interesting careers more outside the traditional mathematical sphere of influence. David Robinson's life story to all who know it has always been notable for being so unusual for an NBA player. Robinson wasn't a good basketball player in high school and only joined the varsity team as a senior when he grew to 6'6". His father was an engineer in the navy and he followed by going to the Naval Academy and studying mathematics. He soon grew to 7'0" and ended his 4 year career at Navy as unquestionably the best basketball player in the history of the school. The Spurs drafted him with the first overall pick and waited patiently as he did 2 years of service. His career with the Spurs included the 1995 MVP, 4.49 blocks per game in 1991-92, a quadruple double, the 1999 and 2003 Championships and sportsmanship and SI Sportsman of the Year awards for his philanthropic efforts and general good nature. In fact, the NBA's Community Assist Award is actually named the David Robinson Plaque. While his rival Shaquille O'Neal called himself the "Pythagorean Theorem, because no one could solve him," I will bet David Robinson could produce a few proofs of that theorem.
Corazon Aquino
Benito Aquino was a Filipino Senator who spoke out strongly against the regime of Ferdinand Marcos. He was imprisoned for many years before seeking medical treatment in Cambridge, MA and settling in my hometown of Newton for 3 years with his wife and family. Upon returning to the Philippines, he was gunned down exiting his plane. His widow Corazon found herself in the spotlight. Corazon had studied in the US, majoring in math and French at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in New York City. She ended up running for President in 1986 and after a disputed election, ascended to rule the country for six years. Her son is the current President.
Dara O Briain
The hilarious Irish comedian double majored in math and physics at University College Dublin, where I also spent a semester studying "maths." Geeky material very often appears in his standup routine. He worked after college as a children's TV presenter, and started standup on the side. He has now blown up into a majorly popular television personality, panel show host and global touring standup.
Zaha Hadid
This award-winning architect was the entry on my list most surprising to the engineers and architects I presented to. One of the leading architects today, Zaha was born in Iraq and got her degree in math at the American University of Beirut. She moved onto London to study architecture and would set up her practice there in 1980. Her work is all over, but the ones most familiar to me is Dongdaemun Design Plaza & Park in Seoul and Innovation Tower at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. MAXXI in Rome might be her most famous. Maybe this is an example of posterior bias, but I think I can tell her mathematical roots from her architecture which feature prominent sharp angles mixed with smooth curves. There seems to be an analytic geometric basis behind her designs.
Alberto Fujimori
The former Peruvian President is a pretty interesting dude. The son of Japanese immigrants to Peru, Fujimori got a bachelor's degree in agricultural engineering in Peru. Apparently he had a thing for the more fundamental fields of his study, rather than just the study of fields, and studied physics at the University of Strasbourg before getting a master's in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin. He continued with a career in academia, before getting into politics and becoming President of Peru. In this time, he oversaw great economic growth, led a coup against his own government, divorced his wife, was accused of human rights violations, won a second term overwhelmingly, rewrote the constitution to legalize a third term, won the third term in a runoff afflicted by voting irregularities, resigned from office while in Tokyo, was charged with human rights abuses and corruption (embezzling possibly $600 million), stayed in Japan under the protection of the Japanese government who would not extradite him, before being arrested in 2005 in Chile and eventually being sentenced to 25 years of prison. Then his daughter finished 2nd in the 2011 presidential election. Wow. Well for all that's worth, math probably helped him somewhere along the way.
Jasper Tsang
The Hong Kong politician got his degree in math at Hong Kong U, and actually did the stereotypical profession of teaching secondary school math after graduation. He became a school principal before somehow moving from there to politics. To be honest I should know a lot more about Hong Kong politics and don't, but Tsang is one of the major supporters for universal suffrage in Hong Kong.
Art Garfunkel
The taller half of the great folk duo Simon & Garfunkel somehow started studying architecture at Columbia before graduating with a B.A. in art history (maybe to honor his name), then staying on to get a M.A. in math. It's a pretty gnarly combo, and of course Garfunkel's following singing career is an even further diversion from any of his academic focuses - although his hit song the Square Root of Silence might have been inspired by his love of math. The success of his music career had some incredibly lucky breaks, and it seems that Art was keeping some other professional options open.
Herman Cain
From his super awkward answers about US involvement in Libya and his understanding of foreign policy (Uzbeki beki beki stan stan), you might wander what Herman Cain studied. Well before he was the CEO of Godfather Pizza, Cain got his B.S. in mathematics at Morehouse College in Atlanta, then a M.S. in Computer Science for at Purdue. He worked as a ballistics analyst for the navy, then for coke as a computer systems analyst and whole-heartedly diving into the food and beverage industry. His 2012 run for Republican nominee for president had its ups and its downs and its outright bizarre moments (he "suspended" his campaign during an event which looked like a parade) and many women accusing him of sexual misconduct.
Rachel Riley
I learned about this British television presenter from watching 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. In the show, she basically handles some numbers in which the contestants, generally famous funny people, have to use to solve math puzzles. The job doesn't really require an advanced mathematics degree, but nonetheless Rachel has one from Oxford.
David Leonhardt
I discovered this name in a New York Times article I read after posting this. The editor of Upshot, a New York Times venture covering politics, policy and other subjects (I'm lifting this straight from his byline), won a 2011 Pulitzer Prize and graduated with a B.S. in applied mathematics from Yale.
I hope you've enjoyed this rather random list and appreciate its breadth in achievements and diversity in origins. I'm not trying to make any statements or pretend this is an in-depth study that studying math can lead to success in any field (although it can!) and yes I'm aware I'm just conglomerating a lot of Wikipedia knowledge. But it's often said that math is the universal language and I think even in our modern society of advanced specialization, there is this age old wisdom that spans everything.
P.S. Just about all the pictures are in the Golden mean.
EDIT: True story, I considered putting Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, in the list but figured a lot of regular people wouldn't know who he is. He studied applied mathematics alongside computer science at Harvard and has done quite well for himself. Then he dropped $2 billion to take the LA Clippers from the truly awful Donald Sterling, and now a lot of regular people know who he is. I'm not entirely sure how he calculated that $2 billion for a city's second basketball team and who don't even own their arena will pay itself back, but he probably knows what he's doing.
I also want to give a shoutout to linguist Guy Deutscher, who wrote this fantastic book Through the Language Glass. Before getting his Ph.D. in linuguistics from Cambridge, he got an undergraduate degree in mathematics there.
While doing research for a presentation I made at work about mathematics, I decided to compile a list of successful people who majored in mathematics. There are plenty of adept individuals who get Ph.D.'s in mathematics and contribute to the academic field. A handful of these become famous outside their field into popular culture, and by a handful I mean John Nash. But there are many individuals, also adept in their own ways, who study mathematics and then pursue careers outside the traditional math arenas. As one such individual, I've collected stories over the years of other like-minded examples to potentially serve as training data for my career model (woh Cal, slow your stat analogies). There's this list out there, but its outdated, overly finite and generally not that good: http://www.math.uh.edu/~tomforde/famous.html
So I made my own. I hope you appreciate the range (and domain) of this list.
Sergey Brin
I would say there are three other fields where people traditionally double major in mathematics. Computer Science is the first one. Brin was born in Moscow in a family of Russian Jewish academics - in fact his dad was a math professor. They immigrated to Maryland and his dad taught at College Park. There Sergey would double major and then go on to graduate school at Stanford, where he met Larry Page. The rest is history, and if you don't know about it, you should Google it.Steven Chu
The next field in which people often couple their degree with math is physics. Steven Chu got his double degree at the University of Rochester followed by a Ph.D. in physics at UC Berkeley. He won a Nobel Prize in Physics while at Bell Labs doing laser cooling work. He then later served on Obama's Cabinet as the Secretary of Energy. He's arguably had one of the more notable and important careers of any Asian-American, and is a very prominent campaigner for a sustainable society.Peter Diamond
The third field would be economics. This should be no surprise to people familiar with this field. High level economics nowadays involves very serious theoretical math with theories all backed up by axiomatic proofs. Digging through lists of notable economists, I was able to find several with undergraduate degrees in math, but I actually honestly don't recognize any of them. I'm sure Ben Bernanke and Paul Krugman and such know their set theory, but they just happen to have stuck to economic degrees. I chose Peter Diamond (math bachelor's at Yale, Ph.D. economics at MIT) for his Nobel Prize in 2010 in something related to the job market and unemployment. He has a long career in social security research.
David Robinson
Now we get to a list of more interesting careers more outside the traditional mathematical sphere of influence. David Robinson's life story to all who know it has always been notable for being so unusual for an NBA player. Robinson wasn't a good basketball player in high school and only joined the varsity team as a senior when he grew to 6'6". His father was an engineer in the navy and he followed by going to the Naval Academy and studying mathematics. He soon grew to 7'0" and ended his 4 year career at Navy as unquestionably the best basketball player in the history of the school. The Spurs drafted him with the first overall pick and waited patiently as he did 2 years of service. His career with the Spurs included the 1995 MVP, 4.49 blocks per game in 1991-92, a quadruple double, the 1999 and 2003 Championships and sportsmanship and SI Sportsman of the Year awards for his philanthropic efforts and general good nature. In fact, the NBA's Community Assist Award is actually named the David Robinson Plaque. While his rival Shaquille O'Neal called himself the "Pythagorean Theorem, because no one could solve him," I will bet David Robinson could produce a few proofs of that theorem.Corazon Aquino
Benito Aquino was a Filipino Senator who spoke out strongly against the regime of Ferdinand Marcos. He was imprisoned for many years before seeking medical treatment in Cambridge, MA and settling in my hometown of Newton for 3 years with his wife and family. Upon returning to the Philippines, he was gunned down exiting his plane. His widow Corazon found herself in the spotlight. Corazon had studied in the US, majoring in math and French at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in New York City. She ended up running for President in 1986 and after a disputed election, ascended to rule the country for six years. Her son is the current President.Dara O Briain
The hilarious Irish comedian double majored in math and physics at University College Dublin, where I also spent a semester studying "maths." Geeky material very often appears in his standup routine. He worked after college as a children's TV presenter, and started standup on the side. He has now blown up into a majorly popular television personality, panel show host and global touring standup.Zaha Hadid
This award-winning architect was the entry on my list most surprising to the engineers and architects I presented to. One of the leading architects today, Zaha was born in Iraq and got her degree in math at the American University of Beirut. She moved onto London to study architecture and would set up her practice there in 1980. Her work is all over, but the ones most familiar to me is Dongdaemun Design Plaza & Park in Seoul and Innovation Tower at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. MAXXI in Rome might be her most famous. Maybe this is an example of posterior bias, but I think I can tell her mathematical roots from her architecture which feature prominent sharp angles mixed with smooth curves. There seems to be an analytic geometric basis behind her designs.Alberto Fujimori
The former Peruvian President is a pretty interesting dude. The son of Japanese immigrants to Peru, Fujimori got a bachelor's degree in agricultural engineering in Peru. Apparently he had a thing for the more fundamental fields of his study, rather than just the study of fields, and studied physics at the University of Strasbourg before getting a master's in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin. He continued with a career in academia, before getting into politics and becoming President of Peru. In this time, he oversaw great economic growth, led a coup against his own government, divorced his wife, was accused of human rights violations, won a second term overwhelmingly, rewrote the constitution to legalize a third term, won the third term in a runoff afflicted by voting irregularities, resigned from office while in Tokyo, was charged with human rights abuses and corruption (embezzling possibly $600 million), stayed in Japan under the protection of the Japanese government who would not extradite him, before being arrested in 2005 in Chile and eventually being sentenced to 25 years of prison. Then his daughter finished 2nd in the 2011 presidential election. Wow. Well for all that's worth, math probably helped him somewhere along the way.Jasper Tsang
The Hong Kong politician got his degree in math at Hong Kong U, and actually did the stereotypical profession of teaching secondary school math after graduation. He became a school principal before somehow moving from there to politics. To be honest I should know a lot more about Hong Kong politics and don't, but Tsang is one of the major supporters for universal suffrage in Hong Kong.Art Garfunkel
The taller half of the great folk duo Simon & Garfunkel somehow started studying architecture at Columbia before graduating with a B.A. in art history (maybe to honor his name), then staying on to get a M.A. in math. It's a pretty gnarly combo, and of course Garfunkel's following singing career is an even further diversion from any of his academic focuses - although his hit song the Square Root of Silence might have been inspired by his love of math. The success of his music career had some incredibly lucky breaks, and it seems that Art was keeping some other professional options open.Herman Cain
From his super awkward answers about US involvement in Libya and his understanding of foreign policy (Uzbeki beki beki stan stan), you might wander what Herman Cain studied. Well before he was the CEO of Godfather Pizza, Cain got his B.S. in mathematics at Morehouse College in Atlanta, then a M.S. in Computer Science for at Purdue. He worked as a ballistics analyst for the navy, then for coke as a computer systems analyst and whole-heartedly diving into the food and beverage industry. His 2012 run for Republican nominee for president had its ups and its downs and its outright bizarre moments (he "suspended" his campaign during an event which looked like a parade) and many women accusing him of sexual misconduct.Rachel Riley
I learned about this British television presenter from watching 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. In the show, she basically handles some numbers in which the contestants, generally famous funny people, have to use to solve math puzzles. The job doesn't really require an advanced mathematics degree, but nonetheless Rachel has one from Oxford.David Leonhardt
I discovered this name in a New York Times article I read after posting this. The editor of Upshot, a New York Times venture covering politics, policy and other subjects (I'm lifting this straight from his byline), won a 2011 Pulitzer Prize and graduated with a B.S. in applied mathematics from Yale.
I hope you've enjoyed this rather random list and appreciate its breadth in achievements and diversity in origins. I'm not trying to make any statements or pretend this is an in-depth study that studying math can lead to success in any field (although it can!) and yes I'm aware I'm just conglomerating a lot of Wikipedia knowledge. But it's often said that math is the universal language and I think even in our modern society of advanced specialization, there is this age old wisdom that spans everything.
 |
| More like Steve Baller |
P.S. Just about all the pictures are in the Golden mean.
EDIT: True story, I considered putting Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, in the list but figured a lot of regular people wouldn't know who he is. He studied applied mathematics alongside computer science at Harvard and has done quite well for himself. Then he dropped $2 billion to take the LA Clippers from the truly awful Donald Sterling, and now a lot of regular people know who he is. I'm not entirely sure how he calculated that $2 billion for a city's second basketball team and who don't even own their arena will pay itself back, but he probably knows what he's doing.
I also want to give a shoutout to linguist Guy Deutscher, who wrote this fantastic book Through the Language Glass. Before getting his Ph.D. in linuguistics from Cambridge, he got an undergraduate degree in mathematics there.
