Roots of Unity

I didn't like math until my junior year of college. I always got good grades in it, and I could sometimes sink my teeth into a fun problem from a math club meeting, but for the most part I found it boring and mechanical. I think the only reason I kept taking math classes in college was because I thought it would be an easy minor. An inquiry-based learning class showed me how creative, beautiful, and deep math is. I ended up going to graduate school in math, and in May 2012, I graduated with my Ph.D.

I started writing through the AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellows Program. My fellowship at Scientific American was sponsored by the American Mathematical Society, and you can read about my experience here. In 2015 I left a postdoc in the math department at the University of Utah to write about math and science full-time.

Roots of Unity is a place for me to write about the mathematics I find beautiful, fun, and surprising, along with other science topics, some with connections to math, and some without. When I'm not writing or doing math, my hobbies keep me busy. I enjoy playing viola, singing shape-note music, sewing, cooking, riding my bike, and collecting beach glass with my husband, who is also a mathematician.

Want to get in touch? Thanks! My gmail address is rootsofunityblog. My monthly newsletter contains stuff I wrote and stuff I read that I think you might like. You can subscribe here.

Thanks to Gregory A. Moore of Orange Coast College, who inspired the Roots of Unity blog logo.

Comments policy: please remember that we are all human beings and treat each other as such. I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive or off-topic.