About My Job: The Mathmetician

by Conor Friedersdorf

A reader writes:

I'm currently a Ph.D. candidate in pure mathematics, and in my free time I like to think about how mathematics and mathematicians are portrayed in popular culture.  Usually, both are portrayed poorly.  For example, if everything you knew about a mathematician you learned from films like A Beautiful Mind or Pi, it would not be entirely unreasonably for you to assume that mathematicians are socially maladjusted and crazy.  Of course, the reality is much...