Making Mathematics Meaningful

So few women have made it to the upper echelons of the mathematics field that it is easy to assume the most unusual thing about Deborah Hughes Hallett is her status as a tenured professor at Harvard University.

However, as professor of the practice of teaching mathematics, Hughes Hallett's position may be the most conventional thing about her.

She has written on Central American pottery, hitchhiked through Europe and the Middle East, studied in a Viennese arts school and taught at a Turkish university. In her own field, she's authored textbooks lauded for their accessibility to women.

"I have two sets of interests," says Hughes Hallett, who was raised in England. "When I was in high school, I was sent to a rather artistic girls' school. I wanted to do physics and chemistry because I didn't sing."

To attend more sophisticated science classes, Hughes Hallett had to go to a neighboring boys' school.

"It was not a lot of fun, but very good practice. I was very shy at the time, and I did better than the guys," she says.

When she arrived at Cambridge University, where there were a handful of women in a department of 300, she says her earlier timidity had disappeared.

"I was used to operating in a large group of men. I had learned to quarrel. That was helpful," she says.

However, between her time at boarding school and college, she experimented with the arts.

"I enrolled in an arts school in Vienna. I didn't know a whole lot," Hughes Hallett remembers.

When she was not listening to the Vienna State Opera (for three cents a show), she found her chemistry skills useful in helping her to set up the proper glazes and found her scientific skills in high demand.

"I did everyone's homework and they helped me because I didn't know German," she said.

Following this dabbling in the arts, Hughes Hallett went to college and decided to study mathematics. But she was not yet finished with pottery.

"When I was at Cambridge I became very good friends with an archaeologist who was working in Central America," she says. "He wanted someone to study how pottery had changed. All the potters were women--it was a pleasurable thing to be asking about."

After getting her masters at Cambridge, she came to the United States and applied for one of the fellowships "they had forgotten to close [to women.]"

After studying and teaching at Harvard for 15 years, Hughes Hallett was itching to travel again. She ended up teaching mathematics to college first-years in Turkey.

On the last day of class, Hughes Hallett was perplexed when her students asked her why she didn't dress like an American.

Her confusion quickly turned to laughter when she realise that the class' only picture of American women came through watching television episodes of "Dallas."

Moments like these with students make her job special, Hughes Hallett says.

"I'm lucky to work among really wonderful people," she says. "I know a whole generation of students."

Although the professor says she enjoys working with her fellow faculty members, she says her students make her job most meaningful.

"The everyday fun of it is talking to kids who are creative, have really good sights, and often get there," she says. "The faculty are fun, but the kids are a lot of fun. If I had to choose, I'd choose the kids."